The Israeli educational system faces the specific challenge of teaching Hebrew as a second language to new immigrants from Ethiopia, who are illiterate in their mother tongue. Despite good will and substantial efforts, the success of these immigrants in achieving literacy in the Hebrew language has been limited. To better meet their social and vocational needs, we revised the existing model of literacy teaching for adults and developed an alternative communicative-multicultural-neuropsychological model. This approach is based on cultural-historical approaches developed by Vygotsky and Luria and cultural neuropsychology. The analysis of neuropsychological aspects of illiteracy and changes in brain function related to literacy acquisition allowed us to suggest adding exercises that seek to train phonological awareness and visual perception to processes of learning to read and write. Forty-five students of the experimental (Orit) program had significantly better scores than a group who received an equivalent amount of literacy classes (175 h). This overall effect of the program was reflected by mean improvements in word and sentence production from pictures and letter recognition and increased self-efficacy for language learning. Such a program can be used as a research platform to teach a second language for illiterate adults who lack formal schooling.

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