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PERSIAN LANGUAGE PROGRAM (PLP) AT FERDOWSI UNIVERSITY OF MASHHAD

First Language learning skills mainly starts with skills of listening and speaking. Early listening skills in the very young children develop with a face to face communication with the people around. Meanwhile, a child develops pronunciation skills by listening to his mother and spotting her mouth and facial movements. By repeated exposures and the help of a tutor, mainly child's parents, a child starts speaking before one year of age on a normal basis which is limited to mimicking single words or short phrases at this stage.

A child proceeds with his language learning by having more and more exposures to everyday language and gradually making simple sentences. The child becomes more familiar with the right rules governing placing words in sentences with the help of the tutor and in this way becomes able to make a variety of sentences by placing new vocabulary within the structure of his mental grammar.

The use of language in its sole oral form continues until the child enters school where he commences with learning how to read and this in turn is in close relationship with his previously learnt skills of speaking and listening.

It has been proved that second language learning/ teaching methods which are based on the first language learning could be more successful.

Diagnostic assessment of the applicant:

Before the commencement of the program, a diagnostic assessment is carried out which provide us with the applicants' personal identity information, educational background, their motives behind and purpose of taking Persian language course, their length of stay in Iran if any, and their native language.

Persian Language Courses for the speakers of other languages at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad are offered at 3 levels of elementary, intermediate and advanced levels.

Persian Language Elementary Course Content:

Here in the elementary course we mainly teach you how to greet, introduce yourself, to talk about your country and your purpose of visiting Iran and some other short everyday conversations.

At this level we do our best to make you develop your Persian speaking at a gradual rate but with steady growth in widening your range of vocabulary on various topics.

You will also learn to use them in short simple sentences with the help of the Persian grammar rules that will be presented to you during the course. At later stages in this course you will be required to give an oral description of your daily activities and errands. Writing some very simple words and sentences are taught at this level too.

Persian Language Intermediate Course Content:

With the consideration of formative assessment results on your rate of progress in elementary level, we keep on presenting you more situation-based conversations on everyday Persian. You will also be taught how to pronounce words with more precision. By learning more sentence-making/syntactic rules during this course and the new vocabulary, you will be expected to make more complicated sentences. Describing your everyday activities and errands should be done in the written form which will be read aloud by you in class so that you will receive some comments from your tutor or fellow classmates on its syntactic and semantic accuracy, your choice of words and your pronunciation.

Persian Language Advanced Course Content:

In the beginning of advanced level, the outline of the course and the required material is prepared based on analysis of your personal needs and of course the results of your previous assessment so that the rate of presentation will be scheduled by your tutor. Overall, the content of this course mainly deals with the following four aspects:

• Topic-based conversation
• Persian language grammar
• Sentence writing
• Report writing

Promoting your listening skills is another aim which will be followed at this course. Here, your tutor will read you a passage in a loud, clearly audible voice which is being followed by some comprehension check questions which you should answer. Learning how to give proper and precise responses is the skill which you will learn by these instructional activities. During the course you may also be asked to deliver a pre-prepared lecture on your favorite topic in the class. This will help you to promote your public speaking skills and answer your audience questions.

Furthermore, in our advanced Persian language course you will be introduced to note-taking skills which are among the most important accomplishments of this course.

We could also offer some more comprehensive Persian courses to those applicants interested to pursue their formal studies at specific majors at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad,

PLP program start concurrent with the academic year of the university, i.e. 15^th October and extends to June next year.