Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages Based on Storytelling Approach; with the Emphasis on Mathnawi Tales

With the development of second language teaching since the beginning of the nineteenth century, approaches and methods such as grammar-translation method, audio-lingual method and direct method have been employed in this field; several content-based approaches was also emerged by introducing the theory of communicative language teaching. Story-based instruction is considered as one the major approaches of second language teaching, which is introduced in the present paper, and it is shown that it can be considered as an efficient approach for teaching Persian language to the non-Persians. After reviewing the various methods of language teaching and explaining the importance of each one, this paper has emphasized on teaching language skills through storytelling. Among the stories in Persian language, Masnavi stories are selected as an authoritative resource for producing educational content, which are derived from human common values. In addition to introducing various aspects of Islamic Iranian culture, a native approach in teaching Persian language to the non-Persians would be achievable through this choice.