Teaching Persian Poetry and Prose to Speakers of Other Languages: In Search of Appropriate Criteria for Content Sequencing

It seems that content sequencing upon empirical work is the most significant steps for upgrading the quality of educational resources in the literature teaching. This investigation focuses on content sequencing in Persian literary texts. The principles for content sequencing are literary genre, chronology, stylistic periods etc. It seems that there are not appropriate criteria for sequencing the content of materials for teaching Persian literature to non-Iranian language learners. This investigation attempts to answer this question “what is the most appropriate criterion for sequencing the content of resources in the teaching of Persian poetry and prose to to speakeres of other languages?” To this goal, a researcher-made questionnaire, after being piloted, was randomly distributed among 52 Persian language teachers teaching Persian to non-Iranian Persian language learners. The results showed that the participants significantly preferred the chronological content sequencing as the most appropriate criteria in teaching Persian prose literature; they considered the literary genre and stylistic periods as the second and third criteria in this regard. Unlike Persian poetry literature, the participants did not show statistically significant difference concerning the use of existing criteria, and they considered all criteria appropriate for content sequencing in teaching Persian prose.