Linguistics and Ancient Languages
Amirreza Vakilifard; Nadia Ahmadi Khalkhali
Abstract
It would be significant to analyze the content of these educational resources to see whether they are in line with the students’ needs. Miekley’s (2005) checklist is considered an effective criterion for the selection and analysis of language teaching materials. The participants were ...
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It would be significant to analyze the content of these educational resources to see whether they are in line with the students’ needs. Miekley’s (2005) checklist is considered an effective criterion for the selection and analysis of language teaching materials. The participants were (a) 25 Persian language teachers teaching Persian to non-Persian language learners and (b) 32 non-Persian language learners, majoring in different medicine sciences in Iranian medical universities. They were asked to analyze the textbook entitled as “Pulse of Life” (Nabze Zendegi) (1385) based on categories in Miekley’s (2005) proposed checklist. Descriptive statistics were employed to separately analyze the data of two groups; the results obtained were compared and contrasted. Given the first section, namely, textbook, teacher participants claimed that the textbook was structurally well-designed and it included attractive content and sub-contents as well as relevant vocabularies and grammar structures. However, student volunteers believed that tasks and activities along with grammar structures and vocabularies were not appropriately presented in this textbook. Two groups of participants perceived that the sub-sections of general characteristics, background information, and methodology guide were not suitable. However, they considered the context section appropriate. Teachers graded the vocabulary subsection, and the students ranked the grammar subsection in the second status. Subsections of passage attraction and book appearance were ordered in the third rank. The findings of this investigation could be helpful for researchers and teachers in evaluating the efficiency and appropriateness of instructional resources, possibly available in the instructional resources of teaching Persian to non-Persian language learners.
Linguistics and Ancient Languages
Amirreza Vakilifard; Roqayeh Habibi
Abstract
Following the theories and achievements of language didactics and also with the emphasis on form and meaning, there are several approaches in a syllabus on its compiling methods, content selection and organizing the selected elements. Such an approach which is task-based curriculum development has focused ...
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Following the theories and achievements of language didactics and also with the emphasis on form and meaning, there are several approaches in a syllabus on its compiling methods, content selection and organizing the selected elements. Such an approach which is task-based curriculum development has focused on the semantic and communicative dimension rather than the grammatical one fundamentally and has attracted the attention of language educators since the last decade of the previous century. In teaching Persian language to non-Persian, this approach has not been accomplished deeply in any field of studies or analytical ones. Owing to the importance of syllabus content in language teaching, this research, whilst introducing the task-oriented approach, examines the effectiveness of the tasks in the second and the third volume from the 7-volume textbook series, "Teaching the Persian Language in Persian", from the point of analyzing the implementation of principles for the task-oriented approach. A questionnaire, with subscales of the task definitions, task components, task framework, task difficulty, and the empirical basis for task-based language teaching which focuses on form in task-based language teaching, is used to explore the evaluation of the two mentioned volumes. The results deduced from the survey of these two volumes, among 40 Iranian instructors and 40 non-Iranian students from two high educational institutions show that the implementation of curriculum design principles based on task-orientated approach is average in those volumes, on both quantitative and qualitative scale and it is still far from a satisfactory level. The results of this study help the educational syllabus designers to design and create curriculums for teaching Persian to non-Persian speakers more efficiently, as well the instructors to teach communicative competence in classrooms.
