A Study of the Reading Passages from " Farsi Biamuzim" Based on Halliday's Seven Functions of Language

One of the main objectives of teaching Persian to non-native language learners is helping them to communicate with Persian speakers in a variety of personal and professional situations in their daily life. To investigate the issues of verbal communication, we are obliged to pay attention to the different language functions. To do this, the present research aims to study the amount of attention paid to those functions in Persian language teaching textbooks. After examining the different sources of teaching Persian language in Iran, a book series called “Farsi Biamuzim” was selected. From this five volume series, reading passages of the first, second and third volumes, because of their attention to and applying language functions, were selected. After collecting and analyzing data, it revealed these volumes have paid special attention to language functions, according to Halliday’s Seven Functions of Language and the number of language functions in every volume, in contrast to the previous volume has an increasing trend too. Also, from these functions, interactional function has gained the most, and imaginative function, the least frequency. The high frequency of interactional function shows that these volumes of “Farsi Biamuzim” are able to act as a communicative tool and answer to the needs of language learners.