Materials development for reading in teaching Persian to non-Persian learners using Quran stories

One of the most effective factors in learning and teaching language is material design and development. By providing suitable and graded reading texts, it would be both possible to increase learners’ linguistic information and teaching them some points about culture and community. Regarding the importance of material development that is both based on teaching principles and reading skill, the purpose of the present study is to provide coherent and graded content for teaching this skill from Quran stories by applying material development approaches. In this paper, first Quran stories were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively and also according to readability formula. Next, based on the principles related to material development and theories of task-based approach, instructional material was provided for teaching reading skill to adult non-Persian learners at an intermediate level of language proficiency. The results of the present study can be described as follows. First, the suggested model for teaching reading skill in three phases of pre-task, during task and post-task is the main result of the study. Second, because reading stories is one of the most effective methods to attract the reader’s attention and can have a positive bearing on teaching the targeted theme, the findings revealed that Quranic stories have the required capacity and potentialities for teaching Persian language. This study indicated that the Quran stories are an excellent source to develop language teaching materials because of possessing features such as authenticity, elegant orthography, diversity, and their being familiar to learners. The use of Quran stories in Persian is one of the best possible ways to help spread the Islamic culture.