Speaking each ot
Hebrew program fosters American Dorit Peled and Kristin Siegel have never met to face-to-face, but they’ve cooked together, sung together, and introduced each other to their families. And they did it all in Hebrew. Siegel is a student in UWM’s Hebrew language program. She takes her classes online from her home in Grand Rapids. Across the Atlantic Ocean, Peled is a student at the Levinsky College of Education in Tel Aviv, Israel, where she is studying to become a Hebrew teacher for non-native speakers. Through a partnership between the Levinsky College and UWM, Peled is earning her student teaching credits by tutoring Siegel. The pair met via Zoom over the course of the spring semester. At first, Peled wasn’t sure how well such a partnership would work, especially online. “How can you connect with someone you can only see from the shoulders and above?” she pointed out. But, to Peled’s surprise, “We enjoyed each other so much. I also learned so much about technology! I learned to be a better teacher.” For her part, Siegel says the Zoom lessons have been invaluable since Hebrew can be a difficult language to learn. “(Peled) helps me with pronunciation. She’s very encouraging at my attempts at speaking, and corrects me very gently. She’s not overly critical. It’s given me confidence as a speaker,” Siegel added. 6 • IN FOCUS • July, 2021
Yael Ben-Yitschak
Hebrew language student Kristin Siegel enjoys food in Jerusalem on a visit to Israel. Photo courtesy of Kristin Siegel.
Forging a partnership
So, Ben-Yitschak, who is from Israel, reached out to a friend at the Levinsky College, Dr. Michal Meishar who is the head of Teaching Hebrew as a Second Language program. Meishar, in turn, was searching for a way to help her own students hone their teaching skills. It’s one thing to teach Hebrew as a second language in Israel where language-learners are immersed in Hebrew every day.
The partnership between UWM and Levinsky College is the brainchild of Yael Ben-Yitschak, a senior lecturer in UWM’s Hebrew language program. She teaches students across the country in online Hebrew classes, through a combination of recorded lessons and meeting once a week to teach them about Hebrew’s unique syntax and vocabulary. “But there’s not enough input. The students don’t speak in a spontaneous way because there’s no day-to-day meetings,” Ben-Yitschak said. “One of the things that I saw was that they were better in reading and writing and less proficient in listening and speaking. They did a lot of writing during the week but not enough speaking. Since they don’t hear enough Hebrew, the pace and the accent were hard for them.”
“She was looking to give them an opportunity to practice teaching a foreign language that (students won’t experience) outside of class. How do you teach that?” Ben-Yitschak recalled. “For me, it was like, it would be great if your students could meet with my students, because they will have more input.” The partnership is now in its third year. The students at both
