پژوهش نامه ی آموزش زبان فارسی به غیر فارسی زبانان
پیاپی 9 (بهار و تابستان 1394)

The non-Persian learners’ appreciation of the social-cultural issues in Iran, cultural differences between learners and their teachers, and their attitudes towards teachers may have various impacts on learners’ anxiety in Persian classrooms. The present research aims to explore the relationships among learners’ anxiety in learning Persian, their attitudes towards teachers’ personality, and cross-cultural sensitivity levels. In addition, it examines to what extent these factors can predict the learning in Persian learners. Moreover, the study will investigate the differences between learners in three variables with regard to proficiency level and nationality. A total number of 68 international students (including both genders) at basic and intermediate levels were recruited in Fall 2009. The results showed that there was significant and considerable relationship among Persian learners’ level of anxiety, cross-cultural sensitivity and their attitudes towards teachers. Furthermore, ‘attitude’ could significantly predict the variance of ‘anxiety’. Moreover, while experiencing more anxiety, the learners at the basic level attributed more personality attitudes to their teachers. Significant differences were also found between the European, Arab, and non-Arab Asian learners with respect to attitude and cross-cultural sensitivity.

Emotional factors have a considerable effect on the second/foreign language learning. This issue has been accentuated by Krashen's affective filter hypothesis (1982) which indicates that emotional factors can function as both a hurdle in or catalyst for learning process. The present research aims to examine the homesickness and social adjustment and their relationship in non-Iranian Persian learners in a selected group of learners at Persian Centre in Imam Khomeini International University. Doing so, 178 Persian learners (35 females and 143 males) were selected as the research sample. The Adjustment Inventory (Bell, 1961) and Homesickness Scale (van Vliet, 2001) were employed to gather data. The results showed that 12.9 % of Persian learners felt weak, 64.7% experienced mild and 22.4% had sever degree of homesickness. Moreover, it was revealed that 24.7%, 62.5%, and 12.8% of learners had low, middle and high degree of social adjustment respectively. It was also found that there was significant difference in total score of homesickness between female and male learners However, there existed no significant difference between these two groups in social adjustment. Analyzing the relationship between homesickness and social adjustment showed that there was a significant negative correlation among the total score of homesickness, subscales of ‘desire to return to homeland’ and ‘adaptation problem’ with social adjustment. Finally, some recommendations are offered in order to prevent and reduce the potential damage on campus and classrooms for teachers and staff.

In recent decades, research and studies on the processing of grammatical structures related to the relative clauses in different languages, have been brought into focus in linguistic researches. The present research aims to investigate the extent to which Arab-speaking Persian learners apply relative clauses (subject-subject and subject-object). In addition, it analyses the errors they make in using this grammatical category. To do so, syntactic and pragmatic measure of applying and understanding these structures in the sentences were examined among two groups of Persian learners who were divided in two groups of intermediate and advanced level. For this purpose, a total number of 64 texts, written by Arabic-speaking learners of Persian in Imam Khomeini International University of Qazvin, were evaluated. It should be mentioned that these types of grammatical structures were already taught in writing courses. The results showed that both the first (intermediate level) and the second group (advanced level) had more difficulty in producing subject-object relative clauses compared to subject-subject ones. It was also revealed that Persian learners in advanced level employed more Persian relative clauses than intermediate level learners. Moreover, even with the slight difference between the number of errors in each group of learners, findings related to the number of each type of errors showed that the most frequent errors in intermediate level were related to the incomplete main clause while the least frequent errors occurred in in omitting relative clause pronoun (i.e., that) and incorrect removal of object in the subject-object relative clauses. However, in advanced level group the most errors were observed for incomplete main clause and incorrect omission of the object in subject-object relative clauses. Furthermore, the least errors in advanced level could be attributed to incorrect removal of relative clause pronoun.

Reading comprehension in Persian for Specific purposes is one of the skills of second language teaching which has received much attention nowadays. In this method, the needs of learners in the target language is the main point in educational planning. The educational goal and content are designed according to educational or professional majors of the learners to enable them to read scientific sources in the target language. Task-based method is one of the meaning-oriented methods in the second language learning, which includes some tasks purposing learners’ involvement, more language process and deep understanding. The present research is an experimental study aiming to the effectiveness of task-based teaching on enhancing the reading comprehension in Persian for specific purposes. to do so, 22 Persian learners at Persian Center in Imam Khomeini International University were selected. The applicants were of Arab background and intended to proceed their studies at engineering for higher education in Iran. Afterwards, they took a pre-test as a placement test and then the experimental group took a course based on task-based method for 12 hours While the control group received traditional syllabus. Having done the treatment, both groups participated in a post-test. The results showed that task-based method had a significant effect on improving the reading comprehension of Persian learners in the experimental group.

Instructional materials, which are selected based in order to design an organized syllabus, is found to facilitate learning process. The present research has taken into account the ‘material analysis’ as a process which is necessary, but not sufficient, in order to employ that for evaluating language-learning materials. Therefore, the study aims to analytically examine the underlying principles of “Farsi Biamouzim” series using content analysis with particular focus on the analysis of its assignments within the 3-step Little John’s framework (2011). The results indicated that the series provided some valuable opportunities for learners to produce their output, as well as enabled them to be independent in the process of producing language units. In addition, the book has emphasized meaning and interaction, offered authentic texts, reviewed previous outputs, contained various mental operations, useful accessibility to new words, and flexibility in learning path and class engagement. However, the series suffered from some shortcomings, among which paying insufficient attention to listening skill and integrated outputs can be mentioned. Moreover, having imperfect table of contents, and lacking continuity of subject matter have made reading skill more difficult for learners. Some other features of the series were reported as ‘providing almost all of the inputs, helping learners express their ideas/information, using English as a medium in glossaries and in teaching the alphabet, considering cultural/historical/literal subjects along with daily communication needs, and paying less attention to the writing skill’.

Comparative study and analysis of educational texts leads us to a more accurate understanding of their characteristics. In this regard, the present study aims to answer the question that whether there are the differences between the textbooks which are specially designed for the non-Iranian Persian learners in advanced courses and those medical texts which are taught at the first semester of the academic year. Doing so, the texts were analyzed and compared with regard to the grammatical metaphor, ranked and rank-shifted components at the level of the clause and clause complex, and so on. In the course of the research, a corpus consisting of 9886 words extracted from the textbooks of the of medical sciences texts for Persian learners and 9775 words from the Guyton's physiology texts were selected and analyzed. Then, each of the linguistic features was individually identified and extracted in the framework of systemic-functional grammar of Halliday. Afterwards, using appropriate software, data were collected, categorized and summarized. The research results confirmed the hypothesis of the research stating that there was a significant difference between the texts of medical sciences for Persian learners and the medical texts for the first semester of the academic year. In addition, the in-depth analysis showed that, in general, there were similarities between the two parts of the structure with regards to characteristics such as ranking, rank-shifting, and ideational grammatical metaphor. In addition, there existed some differences between the order of non-finite rank-shifting and the number of patterns as well as in the logical-semantic relations between the dependent clauses. It seems that the factors of the research can be used to examine the various aspects of similarities and differences of various texts.