Linguistics at Cornell

Ranza123
Tue, 23 Feb 2016 17:58:19 +0000

Absolutely! So in order to fulfill the Arts & Sciences language requirement for Hebrew, you need to take the first three courses offered in the sequence (or, if you are proficient already, pass an upper level Hebrew course). The first three courses cover three semesters and are Hebrew 1101, 1102, and 1103. All three courses are taught by Shalom Shoer, who is my favorite professor I’ve had at Cornell. Along with being a wonderful instructor, he genuinely cares about each of his students and will cater his teaching to the individuals in order to help them succeed.

I went in not knowing a word of Hebrew or the Hebrew alphabet or anything. The program is fairly immersive (or as immersive as you can get without going to another country) and by the end of the first week I could talk about my morning and write a fair amount. The first two courses are five days a week, and Shalom encourages you to try to speak Hebrew the entire class period (especially in the third semester). By the end of the sequence, I could sustain long conversations, read stories and newspapers, and write essays in Hebrew. After the three semesters with Shalom, you can move on to take upper level Hebrew classes if you choose to. These courses were some of my favorites I’ve taken and I looked forward to them every day. Shalom is absolutely wonderful and I would highly recommend studying with him.