Yours Truly or בינינו is a set of supplementary materials for students at the novice and intermediate levels developed at The University of Texas at Austin by Esther Raizen. With two fictional UT students, Ruth and Yoni, as the lead characters, the twenty units in the set present vignettes from the lives of contemporary students. Ruth is from a mixed American/Israeli family, and Yoni is an American who studied Hebrew and feels strongly connected to Israel and Hebrew culture. With families scattered in Israel, the US and South America, the characters and their relatives and friends create a colorful mosaic of school-work-life issues that support a variety of class activities and assignments. Because of its content, this set is appropriate for college students, possibly for upper classmen in high school, but not for k-10 students. Teachers are urged to exercise discretion while working with the materials, as some of the issues (e.g., illness, death, relationships) may be sensitive for some students.

Yours Truly is presented as a set of consecutive pdf documents, each representing a unit based on a vignette, with 8-12 written exercises. The vignettes themselves are available as sound files (see "text" in the table below), and most of the exercises require repetitive listening. Each unit presents up to ten keywords, available both in text format and as sound files (see "keywords" in the table below). The final exercises in each unit focus on comprehension, the ability to identify and define the main themes of the vignettes, and creative writing. UT students have access to two preliminary listening exercises for each unit through the Humpty Dumpty portal, which is currently password protected, in addition to the materials provided here. A Hebrew-English glossary for all units is also available in pdf format.

A teacher's manual for Yours Truly is available upon request-- to maintain the integrity of the materials, this request should come directly from a unit head (e.g., department chair or school principal). In addition to answer keys for all exercises and references to the goals of the different exercise types, the manual includes pre- and post-listening activity suggestions for each unit. The introduction to the teacher's manual is available here.

At UT, Yours Truly is used within an intensive setting. This setting assumes, among others, extensive preparation at home and minimal use of technology in the classroom, as class time is dedicated almost exclusively to activation. Accordingly, student work on all Yours Truly materials is done at home, in advance of class activities.

All suggestions and comments should be directed to Esther Raizen. By the end of summer 2011, all Yours Truly units will be available through a print-on-demand vendor as well as online.