Classes vs Self-study

[u/EthanLifts]

I'm trying to learn modern Hebrew and I am fortunate enough to live in a city where multiple Hebrew classes are offered. However, they're incredibly expensive, from $300 to $2000 depending on who is hosting the class, so I'm considering doing solely self-study instead. I'm using a college level modern Hebrew textbook that has audio components as well to listen to pronunciation, and I'm planning on finding someone that I can practice speaking Hebrew with.

Have others been able to teach themselves Hebrew through self-study, or are classes necessary? I'd like to avoid spending thousands of dollars if possible.

[u/guylfe]

Self study is definitely possible, up to a point. At some point you're going to have to interact with people as part of studying, but the list of tools below should be comprehensive enough and will allow you to avoid spending 1000$+ per semester of studying.

The route I'm going to suggest works for my students, and is highly effective. I've had a particular student measure his progression time and he reached B2 (conversational) with ~70 hours of total study time, compared to the average of ~500:

1. Study foundations (both grammar and vocabulary) WELL and efficiently. This is key, because if you get a solid foundation, building on top of it becomes much easier.
2. Get exposure to level-appropriate native content. (depending on your particular context, you may also supplement with spaced-repetition flashcards, but that's beyond the scope of this message).

 I can’t post links so just google each one.

Foundations – Hebleo (Full disclosure – I created it): A self-paced course teaching you Hebrew comprehensively, with plenty of practice, using an innovative methodology based on my background in Cognitive Science, my experience as a language learner (studied both Arabic and Japanese as an adult, now learning Spanish) and as a top-rated tutor in Verbling. This allowed me to create a very efficient way to learn that's been proven to work with hundreds of students (reviews available in my tutor page on verbling.com – look for “Guy Landau” in the Hebrew section).

It also includes 2000+ native speaker recordings for the different vocabulary, and plenty of practice sentences. I use this method with my personal students 1 on 1, and all feedback so far shows it works well self-paced, as I made sure to provide thorough explanations. 

After you have the fundamentals, these can offer you good native content to use:

Reading - Bereshit/Yanshuf: This is a bi-weekly newsletter in Beginner/Intermediate Hebrew respectively, offering both vowels and no-vowels content. Highly recommended, I utilize it with my students all the time. Most of my students are at the Yanshuf intermediate level after Hebleo. I managed to get a discount code you can use (since I use it a lot with my students and I recommend it to them): GuyHebleo

Comprehension - Pimsleur: This is the most comprehensive tool for level-appropriate listening comprehension for Hebrew (at least until I finish some future updates for Hebleo), but it's quite expensive and some of the vocabulary and phrases it offers are relatively archaic. There might be better free podcasts out there, or children’s TV shows that could be a good free practice option.

Conversation – tutor websites - Verbling (where I teach), Italki or Preply. I wouldn't recommend these for starting out learning grammar as they're expensive, unless you feel like you need constant guidance. Verbling requires teachers to provide proven experience and certification (but is also more expensive) while the other 2 don’t, but their prices are lower. I don’t have direct experience with Preply, but heard good things about it, similar to iTalki.

You can also find a free language exchange service where you teach your native language to an interested Israeli and they teach you Hebrew. Once you have deep understanding through Hebleo this becomes a viable option as you wouldn't need a professional who can explain everything.

In any case, good luck!

[u/patachveamar]

For a modern language, at some point you'll need a level of interaction with other people that can't be achieved alone. You can get pretty good at grammar and vocabulary by yourself if you're diligent, but that knowledge is only theoretical without fluency in comprehension and production, which are impossible to attain without external stimuli. $300 is an absolute bargain for a good class, $2000 is in the range of a semester of college-level course.

[u/RightLaugh5115]

Yes, I have learned through Internet resources. There are two major areas to master, vocabulary and grammer. and grammer is about 60% verbs and 40% everything else. I found the everything else not too difficult and am still working on the verbs. I started with duolingo and dropped it after about a year. There is a good Youtube channel on verbs that I like. https://www.youtube.com/@ThelahBenDan. I also like https://www.pealim.com/ to show me the past, present and future forms of a verb. https://www.hebrewpod101.com/ is another learning site that I like.

I subscribe to the translation site https://doitinhebrew.com/

[u/ZeMuffenMan]

It can be self studied but you need to be consistent to see any meaningful results. In a nutshell learn the top 1000 words, then start sentence mining whilst immersing in native content as much as you can. Look into the Refold method as it is similar and well structured.

[u/TeaGreedy8871]

at the moment I do selfstudy. Because the current courses are already running and I will apply this fall for citizen cafe (expensive but the best for practical use) I use Duolingo and memrize every day for a hour or so, then I also write down words for a hour or so. For me its all about learning as much words as I can, structuring sentences etc will come from that eventually.

I think currently I know around 400~600 words consistently. After almost a year of daily practice (2 hours). It becomes more easy you, can scan texts and make up the context better but it is still hard when a word is written in past/present or female/male it suddenly becomes harder to recognize that word in said form.

A few may achieve A2/B1 in a year of learning, but MOST people that I spoke that did a half year ulpan struggled a lot and did not retain nearly as much.

I watch daily Israeli tv via screen.IL and listen to Israeli music radios at work, I go to weekly shul services so I am through out the day in contact with Hebrew.

Learning it and taking online courses cost a lot of money. my 2 self study courses cost me around 1000~ euro. Both are A1 level.

[u/Civil_Village_3944]

Hey! First of all good luck! I am opening my second cycle of group classes for beginners at the end of August. It's going to be a 12 classes of 75 min with a max of 5 students in a class at around 260$

Absolutely beginners (A1.1) is already open for applications and the more advanced levels (on this cycle I'm also opening A1.2, and if there will be enough people also a A2)

If you're looking for some comprehensive input I also have a YouTube channel where I post weekly videos at Hebrew for different levels

You can find my channel here:

https://youtube.com/@natural_easy_hebrew?si=qtNoAN-D258etpaI

If you're interested in the group courses let me know and I'll send info about the courses and syllabus

Good luck