麻豆传媒在线 students in Hebrew 101 recently completed a project more rigorous than the most demanding multiple choice test or written final: their first interviews with real live native speakers of Hebrew.<\/p>\n
These students immersed themselves in Hebrew starting on day one of their first class, and quickly started to build comfort speaking to each other in the language. As soon as they have mastered the alphabet and basic vocabulary after a few weeks, faculty member Talya Schwarzer engages each Hebrew 101 student in a regular \u201cDialogue Journal,\u201d an innovative conversational writing teaching technique that asks students to use Hebrew in an authentic communicative context without any outside assistance. Emphasizing that these journals between the students and the professor focus on communication, not on grammatical perfection, Schwarzer comments, \u201cIt is always interesting and new to see what each student chooses to write about. We ask questions, give answers, and get to know each other very well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schwarzer\u2019s class recently raised the communicative bar again as they interviewed local speakers of Hebrew for their Hebrew 101 course. Paired with conversation partners ranging from family members to on-campus faculty and local community leaders, the students composed questions and talked to their interviewees, focusing not just on using their best vocabulary and grammar, but also on understanding the interviewees\u2019 personal experiences and following up on topics of interest. While one might expect such an activity to be reserved for speakers who have mastered the language, Schwarzer believes that it is essential to connect with representatives of the language and culture from the start. As she says, \u201cThe goal is to use everything we are learning in authentic ways to build communities\u201d starting on Day 1.<\/p>\n
Nerves aside and conversations complete, student feedback supports Schwarzer\u2019s conviction. Following the project, one student commented, \u201cI enjoyed being able to understand the interviewee\u2019s responses to my questions\u201d and another said, \u201cThe interview helped me overcome my anxiety of speaking Hebrew and really raised my confidence level. My personal goal is to learn to speak Hebrew since I plan to visit Israel and perhaps work there one day.\u201d Friends and family members are happy to participate as interviewees and are often surprised that, after only one semester of Hebrew, students are able to carry on a basic conversation in Hebrew and understand the answers. The authenticity of Schwarzer’s individual project is a refreshing endeavor that supplies all the evidence she needs that her students are ready to connect across borders and build multilingual communities well beyond her class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
麻豆传媒在线 students in Hebrew 101 recently completed a project more rigorous than the most demanding multiple choice test or written final: their first interviews with real live native speakers of Hebrew. These students immersed themselves in Hebrew starting on day one of their first class, and quickly started to build comfort speaking to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":4129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hebrew","category-world-languages-and-cultures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/modern-languages-and-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/modern-languages-and-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/modern-languages-and-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/modern-languages-and-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/modern-languages-and-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4127"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/modern-languages-and-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4141,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/modern-languages-and-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127\/revisions\/4141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/modern-languages-and-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/modern-languages-and-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/modern-languages-and-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/modern-languages-and-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}