The Ulpan Experience

 I'm a few weeks in to my Ulpan class. Here's the low down.

What happens in an actual Ulpan class

The teacher walks in while students do the preliminary classwork. This consists of having to translate English sentences into Hebrew. The sentences sometimes make sense, sometime don’t. After struggling to type in Hebrew for 20 minutes you submit the sentences and they are automatically given a failing grade. You typed a wrong letter. You spelled using an incomplete structure and not a formally complete spelling. You assumed that the use of the first-person suffix or prefix means you don’t have to spell out “I” to introduce the verb. You didn’t learn a particular use of the word or it was an infrequent use that you didn’t focus on. You forgot a term or expression. You wrote something perfectly adequate but not in the way the computer wanted. You didn’t double a letter because you never learned that you had to double the letter. Whatever. You got a 30%. Again. Review the mistakes and take notes.

The teacher starts and the format is that the teacher asks people questions using new and old vocabulary and students have to answer in Hebrew. Some teachers ask personal questions, some don’t. Some want actual answers based on life and others want the structure of the sentence regardless of its truth value. So either you have to word your interesting life in a limited vocabulary or have to think up a pretend response that uses words you know and has no connection to you. Neither is a simple task.

You stumble through an answer because simply knowing the word isn’t enough. There are prompting questions which are designed to remind you of what you are being asked. All that does it confuse you and you second, third and fourth guess yourself. In Hebrew, you have to be able to turn it into a passive third person plural and use it in its slang sense so it means the exact opposite of what it means if you reverse the word order. Then you are asked about a sentence and corrected. You are told “we don’t say it like that”. You have 2 questions: 1. Why (and to a lesser degree, OK, how do we say it) and 2. But that’s the way the teacher yesterday said to say it. You do not get a satisfactory answer to either question, partially because the teacher doesn’t really understand what you are asking. Maybe a different teacher would on a different day but thems the breaks.

Repeat for 4 hours. The teacher introduces a new root and then tells you to use it as a second person singular feminine future even before you know what it means. You are told that it belongs to a particular binyan because that should make it clear exactly how you should pronounce it. In Hebrew, the conjugation is more important than the meaning. Of course, the binyan means nothing to you, and being told “in this binyan, it is passive reflexive so that should make it obvious” doesn’t help. The teacher lists 3 other words you have seen so you can model the pronunciation off of them but then says that this is an exception and for reasons unexplainable, we say it THIS way and not exactly THAT way.

Then the teacher mentions that a common usage of the word is in the following expression but DON’T WRITE THIS DOWN because it isn’t a nice thing to say but that’s how we use it but DON’T WRITE IT DOWN. And also, if you turn it accidentally into the passive it means something horrid so don’t make that mistake but don’t worry about it. Just don’t do it.

You survive repeated public shamings through which you feel both more and less prepared and really want to stay in class and talk to other struggling students but instead, you return to your apartment and work on the homework which asks you to use today’s words and mix in some you haven’t thought about for a few weeks. Another 30%.

Repeat 3 times a week for 2 years beyond the foreseeable future.