All courses described here were / are taught at Tel Aviv University (TAU), The Department of Communication Disorders (Medical Sciences) and the School of Education (Humanities). All courses were based on 40-year long research as reflected in my articles, book chapters, and books.
- The Acquisition of Hebrew as a Mother Tongue רכישת העברית כלשון אם
This is a graduate course, unique to The Department of Communication Disorders at TAU, which delineates the acquisition and development of Hebrew lexicon, morphology, and syntax from the second year of life to age 21. It covers the periods of Early Childhood, Interim Childhood, and Later Language Development, and it presents students with the developmental trajectories of noun, verb and adjective inflectional and derivational morphology and morpho-phonology, compounding, the transition into syntax in early childhood, and discourse syntax in school-aged children. The students are given sound theoretical and empirical foundations in linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive science, and Hebrew grammar, which enable them to see the fullest picture of Hebrew acquisition across preschool, the school years, and beyond.
This course is taught once every two years.
- The Development of Written Language and Literacy התפתחות האוריינות והשיח
This is a graduate course which was taught at The Department of Communication Disorders at TAU. The course started with theoretical foundations of the nature of language diversity and change, examining the notions of genre and modality. A large part of the course presented students with the body of knowledge on the psycholinguistics of spelling development in Hebrew and in other languages. A second part of the course delineated the course of acquisition and development of discourse abilities from oral narratives to written texts of different genres. This part took a two-pronged perspective on top-down (macro) features of discourse as well as on the properties of grammar and lexicon in discourse.
- Language and Literacy in Different SES Backgrounds שפה ואוריינות במיצבים ס”א שונים
This is a graduate course which was taught at the School of Education at TAU. The course introduced the notion of Socio-Economic Background from linguistic, cognitive, social, and educational perspectives. It explained the importance of language and literacy in the home and at educational institutes, and described an array of studies that compared language, cognition and literacy practices in children, adolescents and adults from different SES backgrounds. The course provided students with theoretical and practical knowledge that could promote linguistic and educational abilities and diminish discrepancies between populations.
- The Development of Writing Abilities התפתחות ההבעה בכתב
This is a graduate course which was taught at the School of Education at TAU. The course focused on the acquisition of writing skills as the most important literate ability to be gained during the school years. Students learned about the differences between spoken and written language and about the ways language is used in different types and genres of discourse. The course presented a double-pronged perspective on the development of written text production – a top-down perspective on content and discourse structure, and a bottom-up perspective on the lexical and morpho-syntactic structures recruited to express ideas, concepts, and narratives.
- Reading Comprehension הבנת הנקרא
This is a graduate course which was taught at the School of Education at TAU. The course focused on what it means to understand a text. The students were introduced to theories in language comprehension, with a special emphasis on the comprehension of discourse and how it is updated in the course of reading. The view taken in the course was the attainment of Lexical Quality, with the understanding that correct word identification in context is a critical stage that is extremely important in achieving text comprehension. Various studies of how students learn to read and comprehend discourse were presented and analysed in class.
- Introduction to Linguistics מבוא לבלשנות
This was the only undergraduate course that I have taught. This course was taught in the first year of studies at The Department of Communication Disorders at TAU. The course was designed for student SLPs, and made sure to introduce them to the foundations of language and linguistics from a psycholinguistic perspective. The themes running through the course were the nature of cognition, the basics of language, linguistic theories, the different branches of linguistics, and language diversity. Morphology, as an important feature of Hebrew, was highlighted in this course, as well as the foundations of syntax.