I'm trying to learn hebrew. A very long time ago I learned a small amount and still recognize the alphabet. Now I'm trying to relearn enough to "get by" on a trip to Israel in september.
My main focus is a textbook; it's rather thick with the grammar, but it has a nice, orderly progression and a lot of examples and assignements which are my primary tools for learning.
I've also purchased a number of children's picture books, and some easy-reading (e.g. 80 pages big text) books to break the chain. Also a couple odds and ends I have lying around. Oh, and 2 hebrew<->english dictionaries.
What I've been doing is picking a few books at random and photoreading them at night, then using the textbook assignments as my activation. I'm trying out different goals as I go along. Sometimes I focus on my general goal of learning hebrew, other times I focuse on making the next day's lessons easier, and a couple of times I just focussed on building my enthusiasm.
Does this sound reasonable? Are there other tips you can give?
-Jeff
P.S. I did experience an odd coincidence the other week. One week I was really distracted by work and losing focus on my studies. So one day I tried, as I said, photoreading with the goal of renewing my interest.
The next day when I was studying I found myself very distracted from the exercise and flipped through the book and found a paragraph near the end that I randomly decided to translate. I started to do so, and then happened to look at the title; translated it was "Akko" (Acre), a city with large historical significance and one of the places I have really wanted to go (I like reading history). I found it interesting that one of the major places I can't wait to visit just happened to be my random target the day after I photoread with a goal of ramping up my enthusiasm.
