جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « آموزش زبان فارسی به غیرفارسی زبانان » در نشریات گروه « ادبیات و زبان ها »

The structure of language and researchers' perspectives on it have underpinned the evolution of second language pedagogy. Consequently, the progression of second language education can be categorized into three distinct stages. Initially, language education was synonymous with grammar instruction; subsequently, grammar was excluded from the curriculum; and finally, grammar instruction was reintegrated and complemented with communicative approaches. Thus, it is evident that grammar poses a significant challenge in second language education, a challenge that extends to teaching Persian grammar to non-native speakers. Moreover, a critical aspect of second language learning and instruction is the acquisition process—specifically, the stages second language learners navigate and the reasons behind them. Numerous scholars have explored this topic, including Manfred Pienemann, who in 1998 proposed the “Processability Theory.” This theory delves into the intricate process of second language grammar acquisition, positing that learners advance through a structured sequence known as the “Processability Hierarchy.” Processability Theory posits that second language learners sequentially master content words, function words, phrases, sentences, and subordinate clauses. Considering the discourse on the significance of grammar and the difficulties in learning and teaching specific grammatical structures in Persian, the researchers sought to explore the acquisition of causative constructions by non-native Persian speakers, employing Processability Theory. They then intended to develop a teaching model for these constructions, tailored for non-Iranian Persian learners, using the research outcomes. To accomplish this, they needed to ascertain the Processability Hierarchy stage at which each Persian causative construction is acquired. Following their investigations, they discovered that simple causative constructions are learned during the sentence processing stage, whereas complex causatives are mastered at the subordinate clause processing stage. Building on this, data was gathered using an interview technique, as recommended by the theory. The study involved 120 non-Iranian Persian learners across five proficiency levels: beginner, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate, and advanced. The data were scrutinized using analytical methods consistent with Processability Theory. The analysis confirmed the theory's prediction that Persian learners initially grasp simple causatives before moving on to complex ones. Moreover, it was established that learners progress through the periphrastic, unequal root, equal root, compound unequal, and mono-lexical causatives in sequence when learning simple causatives. For complex causatives, the order of acquisition was found to be agentive-obligative unrestricted, without implicit meaning, with negative implicit meaning, agentive-obligative permissive, and patientive-obligative compulsive. Ultimately, the research findings informed the creation of a model for teaching causative constructions in Persian to non-native speakers.

Today's world is evolving at an increasing speed. In such a world, the rapid evolution of technologies and social issues has led to the emergence of new educational methods, especially new language teaching methods. Considering the wide and diverse population of language learners interested in Persian language learning and the difficulty of face-to-face teaching in the current situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of developing and creating teaching resources and content based on the current digital needs in teaching Persian as a foreign/second language is unavoidable. Therefore, the present study aims to systematically analyze the studies conducted in Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) in Iran to provide an overall perspective of the status of CALL in Iran. To meet the aim, in the time span of 2010 to 2022, 42 academic journals which are certified by the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology (MSRT), focusing on language and language education, were selected. The researchers applied systematic analysis to review 225 articles which met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The analysis revealed that only 12 articles were concentrated on Persian language teaching and learning, which proved the small share of CALL research in Persian language education in the Iranian research context compared to English language.

Due to the vital role of prepositions in Persian sentence structure, they are considered among the most frequent words in this language. Hence, teaching these words to non-native speakers of Persian is one of the important aspects of teaching Persian as a second language. This study attempts to investigate preposition errors made by Arab students learning Persian based on the theory of error analysis. To conduct the study, 50 Arab speakers learning Persian as a second language in the Center of Teaching Persian to non-Persian speakers at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad participated in the study. The gathered data from their composition writing are divided into three categories of errors in terms of their origin to “inter lingual”, “intra lingual” and “ambiguous”, and into three categories in terms of their type including “substitution”, “deletion” and “addition”. The findings of the study revealed that the highest percentages of errors in terms of the origin are attributed “intra lingual” errors (79.50%) in terms of the origin and “addition” prepositions (65.36%) in terms of their type. In this study, statistical description of errors generated by Persian learners are also provided based on which policy makers can improve textbooks and teaching methods in this field.

Formative assessment has an important role in controlling the quality of teachers’ methodology in multicultural classes. Although many research studies have been conducted in the domain of formative assessment and the strategies used by English teachers, there is a dearth of research on teachers involved in Persian language instruction to non-Persian speakers. The present study aimed to recognize the most fruitful and invaluable formative assessment strategies used in the multicultural context of teaching Persian language classes and examine the relationship between the value and uses of formative assessment strategies and the teaching level of Persian language teachers. To this end, three Persian language teachers of the basic, intermediate, and advanced levels in the Persian language teaching center of Allameh Tabataba’i University were asked to answer the formative assessment strategies questionnaire (Jett, 2009). To gain more reliable results, other data collection methods based on class observation checklist (Jett, 2009; Stevens, 2012) and semi-structured interviews were used. To analyze the quantitative data, Pearson correlation (using SPSS version 25) was run. Descriptive statitics and content analysis were also applied for analyzing the interview data. Based on the results, self and peer assessment were found the mostly used strategy. The most invaluable strategy was also reported to be both self and peer assessment and involving language learners in their own learning. Although according to course observations the teachers’ practices were variant, there was a significant correlation between the teaching level and degree of use and value of formative assessment strategies. The findings of this study have implications for Persian language teachers and teacher educators in that they can raise their knowledge and awareness of classroom-based assessment through the use of effective formative assessment strategies in multicultural classes.

Preparation and compilation of educational materials based on scientific principles is one of the major goals of the document of the comprehensive scientific map of the country. Due to the growing need for these resources, unfortunately today we are faced with a lack of standardized and efficient educational materials for teaching Persian to non-Persian speakers. The purpose of this library, analytical and field research study was to develop a simplified and translated text from "Qaboosnameh" anecdotes to study the reflective feedback from both teachers and learners at the pre-advanced level. In order to achieve this aim, Maxwell (2011) and Paetzold, and Specia (2015) frameworks and principles were applied to a text and simplification implemented. In order to collect the instructors’ feedback on classroom application of the designed material, a written semi-structured interview was conducted. The developed materials were given to 15 instructors from Azfa Center at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and 3 instructors from Ankara. All the participating instructors confirmed the appropriateness of the lesson topics and asserted their relevance to the learners’ needs. Also, the instructors believed that the syntactic and lexical difficulty level of the texts were comprehensible for 21 out of 25 Persian learners, which indicates the appropriate level of difficulty of the simplified texts.

Cohesive devices play an integral role in creating fluent and integrated texts. According to a recent approach presented by Halliday and Matthiessen, systematic functional grammar, which was adopted in this study, divides cohesive devices into two categories, namely, grammatical and lexical. The purpose of the present study was to compare the use of cohesive devices in the advanced level learners’ writing samples at two teaching Persian centers in Mashhad, including teaching Persian to non-Persian learners at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and Al-Mustafa Al-Alamieh. Overall, 200 writing samples were collected and analyzed. All advanced level learners in both centers participated in this study. Learner's gender was also taken into account. In order to analyze the significant difference between variables, the collected data were entered into the SPSS software (Version 23) and T-test was applied. The results of the study revealed that, the average use of repetition and reference that are related to lexical and grammatical categories were used more than the other cohesive devices in both institutes. The average use of hyponymy and metonym was low. Of all types of grammatical devices, reference was the most frequent and the least frequent were ellipsis and substitution; In addition, it was observed that there was a significant difference between performance of Persian learners in applying of some cohesive devices such as substitution and ellipsis, reference, metonym, hyponymy, and synonym; also there was a significant difference between male and female participants; in other words, females applied cohesive devices more frequently than their male counterparts.

The present article compares the verb in two types of reading / writing and speaking and the necessity of teaching it to non-Persian speakers. Speakers of language are often unaware of the changes that occur in their language throughout life. Due to the principle of economics as well as the principle of diligence, people try to use the easiest way and the simplest pronunciation. As a result, there is always a change in the form of speech and the writing of the coma remains constant. Linguistic changes take place in all areas of language. This article examines the phonetic changes between the spoken form and the reading / writing form in the news items. Due to the existence of radio and television and the ease of communication and the almost universalization of literacy, spoken Persian has become very widespread and is used by all people. Therefore, the description and compilation of spoken Persian books is a priority after written Persian. On the other hand, non-Persian speakers who learn Persian, in addition to learning written Persian, also need to learn official spoken Persian, and many of them do not just need to speak Persian. In this article, the author has taken the phonetic changes that are common among the subjects' faces and accepted them so that you can teach and discipline them.

In the language teaching and learning context, with the increase in communicative language teaching theories worldwide, the use of video as an audio-visual material has proliferated (Bal-Gezegin, 2014). Nowadays, many publishers produce language learning videos tailored specifically for students in a foreign language program to accompany and complete textbooks. Videos are multimodal because they rely on various semiotic modes or sources (language, gesture, visual imagery, movement, color, music, sounds, and so on). Videos can act as powerful elements in creating learners' knowledge of the real world (Katchen, 2002, as cited BalGezegin, 2014). Despite the abundance of research on images (e.g., Elmiana, 2019; Roohani & Saeidfar, 2013, Tahririan & Sadri, 2013, to name but a few), research on other kinds of visual materials such as videos has received scant attention. Considering the possible effects of videos on constructing learners' views and their psychological effects on the mind of learners, this study aims to analyze the elements of the Rasa Persian teaching video series (hence, RPTVS) created for non-Iranian Persian language learners from a social semiotic perspective. Accordingly, the research questions which guided this study are (1) What is the function of visual aspects in RPTVS?, (2) In what way do the visual aspects of RPTVS support interaction between learners and represented participants? To answer the research questions, three Rasa videos were randomly selected and analyzed based on Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) three-fold metafunction of visual grammar. The materials selected for analysis in this study were the language teaching videos which accompany the Rasa series, for teaching Persian to non-Persian speakers, authored by Shirmohammdi and published in Iran by Al-Mustafa International University in 2012. Al-Mustafa University, established to promote and advance Persian language-learning worldwide for nonPersian speakers, is an international academic, Islamic, and Howzawi Institute in Qom, Iran. RPTVS comes in soft copy featuring 21 units on the whole with each unit accompanying one or two videos related to the particular topic of that unit. It should be mentioned here that the Fundamental level has been chosen because examination of all the levels was beyond the scope of this study and more importantly, the Rasa series is just at the elementary level. The details of the qualitatively analyzed videos were described separately based on the components of visual grammar, namely representational, interactional, and compositional meanings. In response to the first research question, i.e., the function of visual aspects in RPTVS, the findings of the study showed that the visual elements of RPTVS had a naturalistic and humanistic trend. In other words, RPTVS represents the participants in familiar and factual ways. Moreover, all human characters were adults, which might show that the videos were designed for adult users. Regarding the settings and locations, RPTVS portrays common objects which were familiar to students/learners; however, the selection of objects and locations seem somewhat outdated and outstripped by the Iranian lifestyle at present. The represented objects (e.g., clock, Television sets, sofas, tables and many more) are portrayed in ways that could hardly associate with the current life-ways of the Iranian people. Therefore, RPTVS did not show any indications of recent technological improvements in current Iranian society. The findings were in line with Tahririan and Sadri's (2013) findings in which Iranian high school old textbooks used outdated portrayal of objects, overdramatized national identity with poor modality and used grayscale printing. In response to the second research question which was to investigate whether the visual aspects of RPTVS support interaction between learners and represented participants, the results indicate that in the videos of the RPTVS, the medium shot is used more frequently. In this fashion, it can be concluded that the language learners are supposed to keep a personal relationship with the participants as much as possible. The most common contact in videos is the gaze of represented participants toward each other, which shows that represented participants are communicating and encouraging the learners to communicate. Moreover, the results show all visual elements form a demand video through their gaze. In terms of contextualization, the study showed that all videos contained background, except few scenes with a blank background. However, the videos represented real-life activities, which is in line with Ahmadi et al.’s (2020) study of Persian learning textbooks in which the images contained real-life activities to introduce Iranian social life at the national level. Thus, the analysis of the videos based on contextualization modality indicates that theyrepresent authentic meaning in real-life settings. The results of this study suggest that locally developed materials for language teaching, be it teaching English to Iranian learners or Persian to international students, share a lot of similarities in transmitting language and cultural norms to learners, which distinguish it from international publications such as Touchstone or Interchange series. Specifically, Iranian locally developed materials display substantial commonality in terms of culture load. The major implication of this finding is that to enhance the efficacy of the content, instructors need to raise international learners' cognizance of the intricacies, customs, traditions, and values in the Persian culture which make it unique and different in its own right.

The purpose of this study is to validate and validate the level determination test of Persian to non-Persian language training center of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. The method of the present study is descriptive-analytical and the current statistical population is 51 Persian students of that center in 1998. To achieve the research goal and determine the reliability of the test, Cronbach's alpha was used, which is considered a result of 0.802 for this test and indicates the internal stability of the test. To obtain the validity of the test, item analysis including the degree of diagnosis and the degree of difficulty is used. Also, in a written interview, the opinions and answers of teachers and Persian students at the test level, test difficulty and adequacy of test time are examined. The content validity of the test has been evaluated by the professors of the center as "good". The knowledge of the result can be considered to some extent influenced by the duration of learning Persian language of some of them, the interruption between training courses and the shortening of the time to answer the test.

Illustrating for language teaching books is a subcategory of informative illustration. In this research, we reviewed the illustrations of two Farsi language teaching books: the second edition of Let’s Learn Persian 1 and Mina 1. Meanwhile, to evaluate the learning value of an illustration using the proposed model of Clark and Lyons (2011), we randomly selected %25 of pedagogical contents of each book and evaluated communication, psychological and other functions which affect the pedagogical objectives. In Mina, the “representative” and in Let’s Learn Persian the “context representative” are the most frequent functions of communication. Illustrations of both books have numerous failings, including poor representation of lesson goals, unrelated details, ambiguity in the image, poor representation of the content, small images and lack of clarity, some of which cause cognitive overload and basically distort the psychological functions of images. In general, however, the illustrator of Let’s Learn Persian has been more successful; here some creative methods have been used to better represent the content: using the same characters, using two-color and colorful illustrations in one frame to distinguish the main goal from the marginal objectives of the lesson and to distinguish reality from imagination, using ambiguous images to personalize and so on. In this book white spaces, page layout, and the frequency and size of images and content are tailored to the level of the learner, while in Mina the pages are full of multiple images and content, which causes cognitive overload for the learner. Extended Abstract: Illustrating for language teaching books is a subcategory of nonfiction illustration. In general, nonfiction illustration is divided into three groups: narrative, informative and naturalistic. Illustrating for language teaching books is considered as info nonfiction illustrating. Illustrating for these books does not have a long history and majority of the books written to date either have no images or almost have unsuited images. For some reason, even the books published in recent decade mostly have used images rather than digital or hand drawings. In this research, we reviewed the illustrations of two Farsi language teaching books: the second edition of Let’s Learn Persian 1 (Zolfaghari et al., 2017) and Mina 1 (Sahraei et al., 2017a). These books are for adult learners, written for the introductory level, and cover four skills; therefore, their content is similar. Clark and Lyons (2011) believe the learning value of a graphic depends on three factors: (1) features of graphics, (2) goal of instruction, and (3) learner differences. Features of graphic have three components: (1) surface features, (2) communication functions, and (3) psychological functions. Clark and Lyons (2011) categorize graphic in terms of communication functions into decorative, representative, mnemonic, organizational, relational, transformational, and interpretive. The psychological functions of graphic are: support attention, activate or build prior knowledge, minimize cognitive load, build mental model, support transfer of learning, and support motivation. In this study, to evaluate the learning value of a graphic using the proposed model of Clark and Lyons (2011), we randomly selected %25 of pedagogical contents of each book and evaluated communication, psychological and other functions which affect the pedagogical objectives. In Mina the “representative” function is the most frequent one and we found no evidence for organizational and representative functions. In Let’s Learn Persian the “text representative” is the most frequent function of communication, and organizational, relational, transformational and interpretive roles had no examples. These findings reveal that in the elementary language learning books, the “representative” or “text representative” are the major functions of communication. In Mina, the pedagogical content contains 35 illustrations and practices incorporate 19 illustrations, some of which are used in both lessons and practices. However, in Let’s Learn Persian the illustrations are equally distributed in lessons and practices: 19 in former and 20 in latter. This reveals that in Let’s Learn Persian the use of graphic in lessons and practices is identical, but in Mina using illustrations in lessons is twice as in practices. Illustrations of Mina have many flaws, including poor presentation of lesson goals, unrelated details, ambiguity in the image, poor representation of the content, small images, lack of clarity, inappropriate perspective, inadequate cultural valuation and negative psychological load. These features prevent the graphics to deliver their psychological functions, including minimizing cognitive load and support attention. For example, the pointless graphic details about unrelated concepts will distort learners’ mind from the main lesson objectives for a while. However, in Let’s Learn Persian the domain and frequency of these problems are limited. Here the technique of using the same characters has been used. For example, the same characters in an image do various activities. This method helps the readers to recognize the characters once and in later instances she just notices the differences; however, in Mina rarely the same characters have been used. In fact, to appreciate the context differences, it is suggested that one character be put in different situations so as to prevent the mixing of the content objective with the character. Using two color and colorful illustrations in one frame to distinguish the main goal from the marginal objectives of the lesson is another technique used in Let’s Learn Persian. This technique is also used to distinguish reality from imagination; i.e. the character is colorful, but her imaginations are two-colored and placed in a cloud. For personalization, the illustrator shrewdly has used ambiguous image: whenever it is supposed that the learner put herself in a situation, its related graphic is ambiguous. Another technique used in Let’s Learn Persian is combining surrounding and colorful designs, and also combining black and white illustrations with colorful ones. However, the illustrations of this book are not flawless either, and poor representation of the content, inappropriate framing, lack of clarity, unrelatd to the lesson goals and graphics ambiguity are some of its shortcomings which generally causes cognitive overload for the learner.

Abstract This study offers a brief evaluation of the quantity and the impact of teaching culture parallel to teaching Persian language to others using Byram's checklist (1993). For this purpose, the following three books have been selected as samples to investigate the process of cultural transmission in a comparative analysis: ‘Zaban-e Farsi: Book 3’ (1386 — Ahmad Saffar Moghaddam), Amoozesh-e Zaban: book 1’ (1384 – Mehdi Zarghamiyan) and ‘Dars-e Farsi’ (1386 — Taghi Poornamdariyan). In these three books big ‘C’ culture refers to cultural items and materials such as national history, music, literature and art, and little ‘C’ culture refers to social practices such as behavior, etiquette, beliefs, values, and rules. This method counts the examples of teaching language with a focus on themes like life, family, school and workplace, while also keeping track of the quantity of cultural themes and the pertinent interactions. This study tries to develop a theory in which teaching culture is fully incorporated within the teaching of language. Key words: education, culture, language, communicative competence, non-Persian learners of Persian language,

Identity development of the second/foreign language teachers is a central issue in different respects such as their teaching profession. Hence, the purpose of the current study was to investigate the role of negotiation in instructional, disciplinary, professional, global, local, and sociocultural issues on TPSOL (Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages) teachers’ identity development. This paper followed a qualitative approach in which a narrative inquiry was adopted to collect and analyze the data. To that end, two TPSOL teachers participated in the negotiation sessions on instructional, disciplinary, professional, global, local, and sociocultural issues; then, they wrote their narratives with respect to the negotiated issues in different time intervals. The findings of the study indicated that negotiation about instructional, disciplinary, professional, global, local, and sociocultural issues had a constructive role in developing TPSOL teachers’ identity. Moreover, the findings revealed that the quality of negotiation, concentrating on the role of teacher-researcher, developing critical thinking, and paying attention to teachers’ motivation are among the factors which can develop TPSOL teachers’ identity through negotiation. Further analysis of data showed that the knowledge which the TPSOL teachers obtained in the negotiation sessions had a significant impact on their identity development. Thus, it can be concluded from the findings of this study that identity has a dynamic nature which can be constructed and reconstructed in different contexts. Given that, the policy and decision makers within the realm of TPSOL should provide negotiation programs for the TPSOL teachers to help them develop their identity.   Extended AbstractIdentity development of the second/foreign language teachers is a central issue in different respects such as their teaching profession. Consequently, identity development of second/foreign language teachers can lead to their professional development because a possible relationship can be established between the activities an individual does and the identity which that individual acquires. Very simply, identity may be defined as the way an individual sees the world around him/herself and creates his/her relationships based on what he/she perceives from his/her observations. Researchers have proposed many approaches to studying identity, three of which feature dominantly in research studies. The biological approach to identity suggests that identity is similar to other human characteristics like body size or skin color which are genetically transmitted. The socio-structural approach to identity is similar to biological approach, the proponents of which believe that identity is something predetermined, but it is different from the biological because it emphasizes the social factors. The poststructuralists believe in the mobility and dynamicity of identity in that the dialogic role of language is emphasized. Finally, the sociocultural approach to identity states that construction and reconstruction of identity can be fulfilled when one participates in social, political, and perceptional interactions. Although researchers have used these approaches to unpack complexities of identity in different settings, their choice primarily depends on the purpose(s) the researcher follow when conducting their studies.     The purpose of the current study was to investigate the role of negotiation in instructional, disciplinary, professional, global, local, and sociocultural issues on TPSOL (Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages) teachers’ identity development. More specifically, the study used interactional narratology as an analytical framework to assess how the teachers acquired a teacher-researcher identity through carefully implemented interview sessions in which they narrated their experiences of negotiated issues.   This paper followed a qualitative approach in which a narrative inquiry was adopted to collect and analyze the data. To that end, two TPSOL teachers participated in the negotiation sessions on instructional, disciplinary, professional, global, local, and sociocultural issues; then, they wrote their narratives with respect to the negotiated issues in different time intervals. It is worth noting that, in the analysis of the narratives, the researchers used ethnographic semantics. There are two types of narrative analysis: Biographical and interactionally oriented approaches (De Fina, 2015). The two approaches are different in the way that they look at life stories and interactions as the sources of data. One can state that the biographical narrative analysis is “based on the premises that the process of identity building has as its objective the production of a coherent self, and that the ability to create that coherence afforded by narrative has itself a positive effect on self‐identity” (Freeman 2015, as cited De Fina, 2015; p. 352). Nevertheless, Gregg (2011) stated that the interactionally oriented approach to narrative analysis regards self-development as a process with different interactions between the narrator and narrative analyst. The important point regarding interactionally oriented approach to narrative analysis is the significance of the social principles utilized to address the narratives based on their main issues. Additionally, interactions between the narrator and the narrative analyist make it possible to clear up any possible misunderstandings arising during the interview sessions.   The findings of this study indicated that negotiation about instructional, disciplinary, professional, global, local, and sociocultural issues had a constructive role in developing TPSOL teachers’ identity. The findings of the current study pointed to the dynamicity of TPSOL teachers’ identity based on which Persian language teacher educators can prepare some programs to develop TPSOL teachers’ identity. Moreover, the findings revealed that the quality of negotiation, concentrating on the role of teacher-researcher, developing critical thinking, and paying attention to teachers’ motivation are among the factors which can develop TPSOL teachers’ identity through negotiation. Further analysis of data showed that the knowledge which the TPSOL teachers obtained in the negotiation sessions about instructional, disciplinary, professional, global, local, and sociocultural issues had a significant impact on their identity development.   It can be concluded from the findings of the study that identity has a dynamic nature, which can be constructed and reconstructed, in different contexts and for different individuals including TPSOL teachers. This dynamicity of identity helps teachers to acquire a new teacher-researcher identity to critically reflect on the activities they use in their language classes to help language learners learn a languae. Given the conclusions of the study, the policy and decision makers within the realm of TPSOL should provide negotiation programs for the TPSOL teachers to help them develop their identity.

Teaching the “verb” is very important in learning the grammatical and semantic structure of any language. In Halliday’s functional grammar, verb is considered as “process” under the transitivity system. From the viewpoint of this system, verb has the ability to represent the experience in language; therefore, it is considered in the format of experiential metafunction. Process, event, being and not-being, feeling, and action are issues which appear in form of verb phrases. By considering the types and frequency of processes in educational texts, one can identify their approaches to the transfer of experiential concepts of the language and the diversification or non-diversification of processes and the educational outputs of these processes. The main purpose of this article was to explore the frequency of process types and investigate the embedding of those processes into educational approaches in three intermediate books titled “Let’s learn Persian”, “Modern instruction of Persian language”, and “Persian language”. Hence, the processes which appeared in the texts of these books and their types were specified in an analytical-statistical method. The results showed that in the three considered books, relational process has more frequency than the other processes. Since a wide range of sentences are made by relational process in the language, its significant frequency in elementary language teaching materials is educationally justified. However, the books considered in this paper related to the intermediate level. Furthermore, behavioral and material processes which represent most of the human’s life experiences are of average frequency in these books and for the learning and retention of these processes, the writers have resorted more to semantic variables such as partial or complete repetition, synonymy, collocation, and antonymy.

The rich literature of Persian language could be used in the simplified form in teaching Persian as a foreign or second language to improve learners’ proficiency to advanced level. The main question of the current study was to explore the effect of using simplified literary texts on the learning of non-Iranian learners of Persian. This field study was conducted over a four-month period in Iran and China. 22 participants were randomly selected from among 40 Chinese learners of Persian language. The selection criterion was to obtain a minimum score of 65 out of 100 in the pretest. Inferential statistics were used to analyze the data obtained through the tests. The covariance analysis (analysis of variance design in which the effect of pretest scores is removed or controlled) and Shapiro-Wilk test (due to the small sample size) were used to examine the research hypotheses. The findings of the study showed that teaching simplified texts along with the original literary texts to Farsi learners positively affected their reading comprehension scores.

There has been a lot of research on intelligence recently. One of the new areas that has attracted the attention of researchers is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence has many effects on people's work, education, training, learning and life. Due to the importance of this issue, in this article, the relationship between emotional intelligence of Persian students of Al-Mustafa Virtual University of Qom and Tehran University of Medical Sciences who have learned Persian in person has been studied and compared. For this purpose, 52 advanced Persian students from different nationalities and virtual and face-to-face universities were asked to answer the Schering Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire. They were also tested for writing and reading skills. Then, their independent emotional intelligence scores with both skills were assessed. The results showed that there is no difference in learning Persian between virtual and face-to-face universities and both learn equally. At the end, the results are discussed.

The notional-functional approach is one of the most influential theories in the field of foreign language teaching and almost all English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and even Arabic, Hebrew and Turkish language teaching resources, have considered the principles of this approach, in order to produce educational contents. The key principle of this approach is to create purposeful and communicative based balance between the language notions and functions and the real situations. Nevertheless, regretfully not much attention to this approach is paid in the authentic teaching Farsi to the foreigners’ resources. In this study, first the notional-functional approach and the foremost language notions and functions in the framework of this approach are presented. Then, the representation rate of these notions and functions in let’s learn Persian (Zolfaghari & Etal., 2002) and Persian language (Safarmoqadam, 2007) teaching series were evaluated. This evaluation have been made through a self-developed checklist. This checklist consists of 10 basic questions on the content of courses and 6 default responses: at all, very low, low, medium, high and very high with respectively 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 points assigned to each question. According to the results, the let’s learn Persian series gained 35 and the Persian language series gained 16 points out of 50. Although the overall result of this project suggests the superiority of the let’s learn Persian series, but the rate of language notions and functions diversity and distribution in both series, lead us to purposeful planning for teaching Farsi based on language notions and functions.

Reading comprehension is one of the main language skills which could be expanded by making use of journalistic texts as learning materials. Through reading these texts, the learners could develop their language skills and in the meantime learn about the cultural differences between L1 and L2 communities. The present research explored the capacity of journalistic texts as instructional tools for teaching reading comprehension to non-Persian learners of Persian language. The study investigated the relationship between syntactic complexity and the comprehension of journalistic texts by learners of Persian. 1500 sentences were selected from three popular Iranian newspapers (i.e. Hamshahri, Iran and Jame-Jam) published over a two-months period. From each newspaper, 500 sentences were selected which belonged to social, sports and events categories. After determining the frequency of each syntactically complex pattern, they were classified in terms of Quirk et al.’s model (1985). The syntactic complexity of the patterns was also investigated based on Stein et al.’s (1984) Structural Deficit Hypothesis which asserts that syntactic complexity causes difficulty in understanding compound sentences. A significant relationship was observed between syntactic complexity and comprehension of compound sentences. It was concluded that in most cases, Persian newspaper articles cannot be used to expand reading comprehension in non-Persian learners of Persian since they make vast use of complex and compound sentences, displacement of sentence components, passive sentences and structure omission.

A prerequisite for designing an efficient and successful curriculum is the analysis of learning/teaching environment and the analysis of the learner’s needs and goals. The results of these analyses are vital for determining the content of instructional resources and adopting appropriate instructional procedures and processes. In many language teaching centers, there is usually no opportunity to carry out such analyses. In such conditions, the best option is to conduct periodic curriculum evaluation. Curriculum evaluation has various dimensions of which evaluation of the learner satisfaction is of special importance. In the present study, we tried to evaluate learner satisfaction in two Persian language teaching centers: Dehkhoda (affiliated to Tehran University) and Almahdi (affiliated to Almostafa Open University). For this purpose, a questionnaire was designed which drew on Bailey's (2009) criteria and some other criteria developed in educational psychology. The criteria included the understandability of learning materials, attention to formative assessment, attention to L1 of the learners, the curriculum flexibility, appropriateness of the curriculum to learner conditions, enjoyability of learning materials, attention to learner's present and future needs, and apprpriatenes of the curriculum to the learner's age. 80 Persian learners answered the questionnaire. Results indicated that, in the two centers, the learner's satisfaction of content and curriculum was nearly 50 percent. Nation and Macalister's (2010) curriculum development model was consulted to offer suggestions for the improvement of curricula of Persian language teaching centers.

Learning a second language means developing communicative capabilities in the actual ‎context of the target language. The identification and application of morphological and ‎syntactical elements are necessary but not sufficient for language learners as they need to ‎comprehend, learn and enact the following competencies that native speakers actually are ‎equipped with: grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence, and ‎strategic competence. Achieving such an objective requires certain key infrastructures such as ‎defining pedagogical objectives, preparing linguistic framework, identifying and analyzing ‎learners’ errors, preparing the major and supplementary learning materials (particularly, the ‎dictionary), reviewing teaching methodologies, (re)training qualified teachers, and assessing learners. ‎Outlining such key infrastructures, the present paper highlights the importance, roles and ‎interconnectivity of these infrastructures to enhance communicative capabilities in teaching ‎Persian to non-Persian speakers. The study specifically determines that a cohesive plan to ‎develop communicative capabilities and enhance pedagogical outcomes requires the ‎recognition of the interrelationships between different infrastructures; that is, they serve one another as prerequisites and complements.‎

The notion of genre and its application in language teaching and learning has been given increasing attention in the past decades. Abstracts are an important area of inquiry in genre analysis. Therefore, identification and mastery of textual and rhetorical structures of abstracts can be beneficial. The present study sought to analyze the rhetorical structure of thesis abstracts in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and TPSOL (Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages). To this end, 80 abstracts from the two disciplines (40 abstracts from each discipline) were chosen from among the theses submitted between the years 2008 to 2013 at Allameh Tabataba"i University. Following Hyland"s (2000) five-move model, the textual organization and rhetorical structure of each abstract were analyzed. The findings revealed generic variations across the two disciplines, indicating the obligatory and common moves in the structure of abstracts. TPSOL abstracts displayed a stronger tendency to omit the conclusion move (M5) in contrast to TEFL abstracts in which M5 was considered a fundamental and significant move. Another striking difference emerged in terms of patterns of reordering and repetition of some moves which appeared among some TPSOL abstracts only. It can be concluded that TEFL abstracts are more consistent with the international norms and genre of academic writing. The findings have pedagogical implications for students, ESP instructors, materials developers, and syllabus designers, and provide suggestions for further research.