Persian Language Courses
Persian is an Indo-European language, the linguistic cousin of English, German, Greek, Latin, French, Sanskrit, Russian, etc., showing many of the linguistic features of English relative to other IE languages: loss of case, grammatical gender, adjective agreement, etc. Its use of the Arabic script, however, rather than the Latin--an historical accident--poses an obvious obstacle to English learners. These courses are designed to deal with this hurdle from the beginning by devoting a considerable portion of the first three weeks of the first semester to assimilating thoroughly the new graphical-phonological association as a solid foundation of future study. Therefore, transliteration will not be used.
During the same period of learning to read, write, and pronounce words in the Arabic script, greetings, simple drills, dialogues and conversations will be used to begin the communicative phase of the course. Thus the semester begins with an outline of the pronunciation and writing system of Modern Persian supplemented with greetings and real communicative drills. All semester courses of the Persian program emphasize all four principal language skills: speaking, comprehension, reading, and writing throughout the year. Consequently, dialogues and drills have been designed with this in mind. Authentic texts are used, rather than constructed readings, and even when edited they represent genuine communication. All reading texts and dialogues are recorded on cassettes for students to use at home or in a language laboratory; others as mp3 and digital video are emailed or presented on compact disk.
The
textbook for the first three semesters, Modern Persian Elementary
Level, by Gernot Windfuhr, contains twenty-eight lessons, designed to
be completed in four semesters, lessons 1-8 in the first semester, 9-17
or 18 the second. Third semester finishes the
book. Modern
Persian Intermediate Level, by the same author, is used for the fourth
semester. The lessons in the texts are supplemented by additional
drills, dialogues, situational skits, games, poetry, and songs, drawn
from various sources
Persian Language Course Outcome Objectives
Selected Bibliography for Persian study
Supplementary links for Persian study
Persian Course Offerings
Spring 2010 see course offeringsDuke University
Instructor: Fattaneh Naeymi-Rad
Intermediate Persian PERSIAN-64
Instructor: Fattaneh Naeymi-Rad
For course information and registration contact Baishakhi Taylor, 668-2146, bbane2@duke.edu
Ms. Becky Hayes, Department of Slavic and Central Asian Languages, 660-3140, bhayes@duke.edu.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Instructor: Zahra Kamarei
For registration information contact Ms. Lori Harris,
leharris@email.unc.edu , tel. 843-5340.
North Carolina State University
Elementary Persian II PER 102
Instructor: Dwight Stephens
Intermediate Persian II PER 202
Instructor: Dwight Stephens
For registration information contact Ms. Faye Walker, Dept. of Foreign Languages,
515-9276, efwalker@social.chass.ncsu.edu or Dr. Dwight Stephens, dstephens@ncsu.edu, 515-9306.
North Carolina Central University
No Persian classes are offered at present, but they are anticipated for the future.
Please contact A Nasir, anasir@nccu.edu, tel. 530-7372 for more information