Virtual: ‘Persian Language Pedagogy: Challenges, Obstacles, and Innovative Responses’

Persian Language Pedagogy: Challenges, Obstacles, and Innovative Responses is an attempt at providing innovative responses to challenges and obstacles that Persian language instructors particularly, but language instructors more broadly, encounter in their classrooms. The panelists will address topics such as the challenges in teaching heritage students vs. non-heritage ones, the difficulties of teaching morphologically complex idiomatic expressions in Persian, teaching reading in Persian to literate college-level novice readers of Persian as a second language, devising effective blended language learning experiences, using technology in developing instructional resources for language learning, and practicing the Communicative Approach, Task-Based Language Teaching, and Content-Based Instruction in Persian language teaching. Register in advance: go.unc.edu/Persian.

Moderator: Dr. Shahla Adel, UNC Teaching Associate Professor of Persian Language

Panelists:

Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi, Senior Lecturer of Persian Language and Linguistics, McGill University

Title: Second Language Morphology: Case of Idiomatic Expressions

Michelle Quay, Lecturer of Persian Language, Columbia University

Title: Communicative, Task-Based, and Content-Based Approaches to Persian Language Teaching: Second Language, Mixed and Heritage Classes at the University Level

Peyman Nojoumian, Associate Professor (Teaching) of Persian, University of Southern California

Title: Using Technology to Develop Instructional Materials for Persian Based on Task-Based Language Teaching

Karine Megerdoomian, Principal Computational Linguist, the MITRE Corporation

Title: Linguistics Competence of Persian Heritage versus Second Language Speakers

Mohamad Esmaili-Sardari, Academic Coordinator of the Middle Eastern Languages Program, the Johns Hopkins University

Title: The Persian Language Educator’s Role in Developing Effective Blended Language Learning: From Principles to Practice

Nahal Akbari, Clinical Assistant Professor and the director of the Persian language program, the University of Maryland

Title: Second Language Reading in Persian

Register in advance: go.unc.edu/Persian

Organizers: Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi and Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi.

For more information, contact Dr. Yaghoobi at Yaghoobi@email.unc.edu.

Co-sponsored by the UNC Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies, UNC Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, UNC Persian Studies Program, and the American Institute of Iranian Studies.