Investigating the Effect of Using Simplified Texts from Sadi's Golestan on the Reading Comprehension of non-Iranian Persian language learners

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.