The The Effect of Constructivist Multimedia Software on the Learning of Basic Farsi Words

The correct teaching of the second language, and the learners’ and teachers’ success depends on a number of factors the most important of which include instructional strategies, teaching methods, and the intructional instruments that the teacher adopts. However, it can be fruitful when the teacher is not only familiar with the strategies and the effects of the language teaching instruments, but also chooses the best ones based on the situation. Therefore, this research aimed to study the effectiveness of a researcher-designed constructivist multimedia software for teaching pronunciation and spelling of Farsi words. This applied research adopted quasi-experimental design. Simple random sampling was used to select the sample of this study from 210 non-Persian foreign language students enrolled in the Persian Language Teaching Center of Imam Khomeini International University. 40 students were selected 9 of whom were excluded from the sample because of their fluency in Farsi and the lack of homogeneity with the rest of the sample. 31 participants qualified to participate. 16 of them were assigned to the experimental group (8 males and 8 females) and 15 to the control group (8 males and 7 females). Both experimental and control groups were given a pre-test and after 8 training sessions (for the experimental group via software, and for the control group without using the software), the groups were posttested. The analysis of data obtained from pre-test and post-test showed that instruction through the multimedia software significantly affected learner's Farsi spelling, but did not affect their pronunciation of Farsi words.