This project grew out of the need to provide more opportunities for interaction and practice in less-commonly-taught languages. Our idea was that an interactive website could offer a convenient review of Hebrew vocabulary and give students a chance to both read and respond in Hebrew.

The site is designed to work on any computer, without the need for special fonts or plug-ins. Students can use the tutorials to do a quick review in the library, at home, or any time they happen to be near a web browser. While no web site can take the place of person-to-person interaction, these exercises should provide a basic level of practice in Hebrew recognition, translation, and communication.

The tutorials on this site are designed to complement and reinforce the vocabulary lists found in Encounters in Modern Hebrew by Edna Amir Coffin. This is the textbook used in the Hebrew classes at the University of Oregon, and we believe it is a good choice for other classes and for students learning Hebrew on their own.

Encounters in Modern Hebrew is available from the University of Michigan Press in Ann Arbor.

This project was funded by a grant from the Northwest Academic Computing Consortium.

The tutorials were developed and built in the Yamada Language Center at the University of Oregon.

Eric Pederson, from the UO Dept. of Linguistics, applied for the grant and provided pedagogical guidance for the project.

Jeff Magoto provided a home for the project, gave feedback on every detail of the design, and kept the whole project on track.

Alon Raab double-checked the Hebrew and gave the tutorials their first field test in his courses.

Niels Proctor came up with the original concept and spent far too many long nights creating the graphics, javascript, and DHTML.

Nureet Carmel provided love, support, suggestions, and sushi (more or less in that order).

This site was programmed primarily to the music of R.E.M., Counting Crows, Christine Lavin, and The Cars. Caffeine came from too many places to list.

Now that we have one batch of tutorials up on the web, we're already thinking of ways to improve and expand on this concept. Some of our ideas for future grant work include:

adding the option of using a standard Israeli keyboard on the English-to-Hebrew tutorials,

creating more English-to-Hebrew tutorials,

creating Hebrew-to-English exercises for each chapter,

adding other types of exercises (such as matching and fill-in-the-blank),

adding audio and video components,

and

creating similar resources for other languages.

Do you have an idea for a feature that should be added to this site? Drop us a line and let us know! (ylc@oregon.uoregon.edu)