The history of our ulpan

The history of our ulpan

The Beginning

The History of Our Ulpan - I Welcome You to Our Ulpan Ulpan4U, and I want to tell you a little about the history of our ulpan. Which will show you why we opened our ulpan and why we began teaching modern Hebrew.

My name is Rozanov Danny, I was born in St. Petersburg and have been in Israel since I was 10, since 1990. I speak Hebrew as a native language, and even better than Russian or English. For the last 20 years, I have held high positions in various companies related to business development, marketing, management, etc. I had a unique opportunity to move to St. Petersburg for a couple of years in order to develop several companies in the local market. And from 2015 to 2017, I lived in St. Petersburg.

The beginning of teaching

In 2015, in addition to developing various companies in the business sphere, I began teaching Hebrew to students at the Israeli Consulate in St. Petersburg. At first, it was like a hobby, but over time it grew into something much more interesting. I am very grateful to those people thanks to whom I plunged into the field of teaching Hebrew. I have always conducted and continue to conduct training with a positive attitude, improvisation (I change the course/lesson depending on the level of the student and/or class) and using modern technologies, such as various modern games, WhatsApp, etc. for quick language acquisition among students.

The problem I saw

Among all the teachers at the Israeli Consulate in St. Petersburg, I was essentially the only teacher who had also lived in Israel. And despite the fact that all the teachers were excellent, few of them had lived in Israel, much less for even a couple of years. And then I ran into the first problem. For the first time, I saw that students were being taught not the Hebrew that Israelis use every day, but purely grammatical Hebrew, which even most Israelis do not know. And grammatical Hebrew is significantly different from ordinary modern Hebrew. And while my students were already writing Hebrew in the script printed on WhatsApp, and speaking to me in Hebrew. The students of the "grammar" teachers were still learning only vowel marks (which no one in Israel uses). Those of you who are a little familiar with this topic will probably now ask: "But how can you learn Hebrew without vowel marks"? ...

My dears, believe me, you don't need vowels in Hebrew to read. And if I have the opportunity to teach you, I will teach you how to do it.

Free Ulpan Result - worst than can imagine

When I returned Israel, I realized that the problem was actually even worse than I thought. More and more students who had graduated with honors from free state ulpans began to contact me. And almost all of them had the same situation. They did not speak Hebrew, did not understand what was being said to them, and did not understand why everyone was writing without vowels, and essentially could not read even simple words. And this is taking into account the fact that they spent about 6 months of their time studying Hebrew (Having spent money, we can earn new money, having spent time, we can no longer get it back!).

And I began to see this picture more and more often. When repatriates work in very difficult jobs. The kind that ordinary Israelis simply wouldn't do. Jobs like constantly lifting concrete slabs, cleaning or replacing chemicals, cleaning factories, etc. Because they simply don't know Hebrew, and at the same time have a nice diploma from a state ulpan.

Ulpan4U - The Beginning

After I got "sick" of continuing to watch this, I decided to create Ulpan4U - Spoken Hebrew School.

The main goal of our Ulpan is a fast learning of modern Hebrew, English and Russian speaking students. The secondary goal is to remove the students' accent, which in fact will always slow them down on the career ladder. In our ulpan, we begin to speak Hebrew already in the first lessons, write words (without vowels), write messages to each other on WhatsApp or other platforms. We listen to modern Israeli music. We play interactive games in Hebrew and much more. The entire learning process takes place in a positive, relaxed ease. And you will be surprised that you will be able to write a short essay after just 2 months. Without spending more than 4 hours a week.

We have already trained a couple of hundred people. And we are happy to welcome new students who want to quickly master Hebrew.

The advantage of our ulpan:

• Small classes - up to 8 people.
• Online training, or in our institutions in various cities of Israel - Bat Yam, Netanya, Rishon LeZion.
• Focused courses based on the student's goals.
• Teaching in English with switches to Hebrew depending on the level of the group.
• And most importantly, all our students begin to write and speak Hebrew after just 2 weeks.