One of the ways I teach people to how to read in Hebrew is that I first teach them the Aleph Bet and vowels. I teach the characters by using mnemonics. For example, the letter gimmel has a gap. This letter looks very similar to the letter noon. The way how I teach student to differentiate between the two letters, is that gimmel has a gap, but noon has no gap.  These mnemonics make it very easy to a person to learn how to read in Hebrew.

Reading fluently

Once the student can recognise all the consonants and vowels, I teach them how to break a word up into syllables. I have found this through all my years of teaching, this is a key strategy to learn how to read in Hebrew fluently. I have identified six different syllable types that can found in a Hebrew word (not necessarily together though). So, I ask the student to learn how to break up the word into syllables. Once this is done correctly, they find it extremely easy to read the word. As I say to them, they aren’t necessarily reading a Hebrew word, but rather individual syllables.  Another tip I give to students, is once they have read the first syllable, keep moving forward. They must not try and read everything at once.

Making mistakes

I always tell the students that it is inevitable that they will make mistakes. If they make a mistake, to correct the mistake, and keep moving forward in the word. What does “moving forward” mean? It means, not to keep repeating previous syllables to try to appear to be fluent. I tell my students that fluency will be achieved once they can read a word syllable by syllable. The trick is to read syllable by syllable, and that is how to read in Hebrew.