I really enjoyed using this book! Just looking at the cover in the photo is bringing back a lot of fond memories. This was the book that made me love Hebrew, and love studying languages in general. Because it was so motivating for me, I give it 4 stars despite its flaws. This book introduces grammar and vocabulary in a very logical succession that helps you build a very good knowledge base for future study. At every point in this book I felt I was learning something useful, and I remember everything... more info
Criticism of the Accompanying Audiotapes:
Everything that the other reviewers have said is true. On the whole, the course is excellent, containing many stories that expose the learner to different situations, thereby reinforcing the vocabulary and the morphology naturally and in a sequential way. The illustrations are cartoonish, but who cares. A really cool feature of the book is that words with penultimate stress are transliterated in parentheses with an accent mark over the stressed syllable, making it impossible for a learner to pronounce those... more info
Frustrating:
I bought this set because I thought that the cassette tapes would provide a way to study while driving in the car. This did not work out. Too much content had to be learned before even one side of one tape could be understood. The content progressed at a very rapid pace and the introduction of new material was not well organized. The biggest problem with the book was the size of the Hebrew text. A magnifying glass is an essential tool to read the text. After a while, though, reading through the magnifying... more info
Good grammar, but stories get tiring:
I really liked this book and tape set when I first began using it. It introduces many grammar points early on, and the tape sets have native speakers. However, newer methods have been developed since this book was written, and I think they are more effective. The newer series are based not on memorizing dialogues and word lists, but on seeing or hearing things are responding to them. In addition, newer multimedia series are more professionally done with children playing the parts of children, men playing... more info
