Want to speak Hebrew like a local? Here's your guide.

After years of struggling to truly pick up the language, here's how I became fluent in Hebrew — and how you can too.

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When I moved to Israel in 2013, I knew exactly two Hebrew words: shalom and eeparon (pencil).

So I decided to go to a conventional Hebrew school (known as ulpan) — five hours a day, five days a week — only to realize that the teaching style was too antiquated to exponentially learn and freely speak the language.

From there, I jumped around to private tutors, online courses and tutorials, flash cards, back to ulpan … but nothing seemed to be working!

And it wasn’t because Hebrew is such a challenging language (frankly, it’s not). It was because of the way I was learning it, which I figured out only after landing upon a game-changing method.

Here’s how I finally became fluent in Hebrew — and how you can too: