how long does it take to master hebrew decoding?

I recently received an interesting question about mastering decoding: how long does it take? The educator who posed it was impressed by the fluency of children featured in a section of #OnwardHebrew's "Conquering the Challenge of Hebrew Decoding" webinar that was held in summer 2024. To hear what prompted this question, view this section of the webinar (I've cued it up where you'll catch a little context, but feel free to start a little farther ahead at 24:30; end your viewing at 26:44). The educator who posed the time-it-takes question specifically noted: It seemed that the students really were “master decoders” in the examples that were shared.  From what I could see, they were quite proficient.  She then asked how long it takes to achieve the skill of decoding to this level of mastery.

Indeed, one of the earliest stated goals of #OnwardHebrew is to develop learners who are competent and confident users of Hebrew. But interestingly, if one watches the children in the short video clips carefully, it is easy to see that they are not "decoding," a term that describes the building of words by sounding out letters and vowels. In English, we see this with a 5 or 6 year old who sounds out the letters in c-a-t or j-u-m-p. In Hebrew we would see this with a novice sounding out the Shin and the Kamatz at the beginning of the word Shalom before moving on to blend the other letters and vowel signs in the word. Decoding is often slow and laborious, yet, the children in the video were not struggling with the words at all.

And why not? The children in the linked video clip were not decoding, but rather reciting words and phrases and matching them to the print.  The first child starts by saying, "So when the teacher said 'gomel hasadim tovim' I knew that was in the middle of the prayer ..." Moreso, the child points to the words as he says them. Look and listen carefully - he is not decoding, but reciting a phrase that he knows and matches it to the print on the page. The same actions happen with each of the other learners featured in the video - they recite a word or phrase and can easily point to it on the page. Yes, they CAN decode, but what we see in these video clips are students who have mastered the blessing through the process of recitation, as well as the skill of basic decoding, and can match the two "sound-to-print."

When I teased out what was going on with these children, I admit to being amazed with what they and their teacher (Linda Duke) had accomplished. Linda later told me that they spend a fair amount of time in class learning to recite the prayers and blessings children are responsible for in their synagogue's curriculum. And then they do work sound-to-print. 

In my efforts on behalf of #OnwardHebrew the past few years, I have become convinced that in the time we have and with the Hebrew language skills our children bring to the table (like "not much"), it's an unfair expectation for our learners to become "fluent and accurate Hebrew readers" (or even decoders).** In addition, as many of you have heard from me: if all one can do is decode, one cannot pray at synagogue speed. To be a successful "pray-er" a person must learn to recite the prayers and blessings. But then the magic happens - with the ability to recite and with a knowledge of decoding, a person can pray competently and confidently, siddur in hand. And THIS is what I feel is a fair expectation in part-time Jewish education.

Thank you to Linda and her students for showing the way AND for the educator who sent me the question which forced me to take a closer look at what these video clips were demonstrating. And thank you to all who will take time to consider what this could mean for their own students, in their own program! It's time to change our expectations and to match our teaching strategies to these new goals.

** The video segment comes from the webinar, "Conquering the Challenge of Hebrew Decoding." On behalf of your learners, it is well worth taking 45 minutes of your time to view it to discover research from the "science of reading" as it applies to Hebrew decoding, as well as strategies that are worth our teachers/tutors learning to integrate into their repertoire. 

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