Virtual Persian Language Teaching to Non-Persian Speakers: An Alternative or an Option?

Corona is a phenomenon that the living human being has not experienced before, and it happens so suddenly that it causes the closure of Persian language classes in the world. There are 14 Lebanese students studying at the Center of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages at Allameh Tabataba'i University, who were getting ready to attend academic study in Iranian universities for the year 1399. They have spent half of their Persian-learning course in face-to-face classes where they have encountered Coronavirus problems. In order to solve their problem, Azfa center has shifted their class to virtual online classes. This article reports the result of the virtual Persian classes that took place in this center. The question of this research is: Whether virtual online classes can be replaced with face-to-face education in emergency conditions? The results showed that the rate of language learners' progress in Coronavirus epidemic conditions (virtual education) was not significantly different from face-to-face teaching. Lebanese learners were also largely satisfied with learning Persian virtually. It can be concluded that in emergency situations, the web platform can be used for language teaching. In order to answer the question of the research, we have used students' progress tests and compared the grades of face-to-face classes with virtual online classes and also used a researcher-made questionnaire to measure students' satisfaction.