Tips for Teachers

Cultural

• Iran is culturally diverse; therefore, it is impossible to represent all Persian speakers using cultural generalizations. While students who come from urban centres in Iran will probably have similar customs of eye contact and expression of emotion to westerners, students from rural areas may not. Students' age and religious beliefs may also play an important role in their cultural expectations regarding language. It is important to keep in mind that the cultural generalizations represented below may not apply to all students.

• Students may be reluctant to approach teachers with questions. Monitor students to see that they understand the material with which they are working.

• Students may not be accustomed to making direct eye contact with teachers.

• Female students may be more comfortable at a greater than usual distance from male teachers and may be reluctant to make eye contact.

• Students may be reluctant to express emotion in a classroom situation.

• Thumbs up is definitely not okay. In Iran, this gesture is very impolite.

• Almost all Iranian immigrants are literate in their native language. Most Iranians who are not literate are older people from rural areas in Iran and are unlikely to be found among immigrant populations.

For more information, see Culture and Communication

Phonology

• Most of the sounds of English are also found in the Persian language; however, there are a few English sounds that do not occur in Persian. These sounds need to be taught to Persian speakers learning English, and may take some practice. For more information on Persian phonetics and phonology, including Persian and English vowel charts, see Description

• When first learning English, speakers of Persian will most likely sound out each consonant.

• There are only four English consonants that do not exist in the Persian language. These are: the voiceless interdental fricative [], as in thigh, the voiced interdental fricative [ð] as in thy, the velar nasal [], as in the final sound of sing, and the rounded velar glide [w] as in went. It may take Persian speakers time to learn to pronounce these sounds. The velar glide, [w], can be a particularly difficult sound for Persian speakers to learn. They may have trouble hearing the difference between the sounds [v] and [w], and will often replace [w] with the Persian sound [v]. A speaker of Persian learning English, therefore, might pronounce Wednesday as 'vednesday' [venzdei], and window as 'vindow' [vindow].

• The Persian [r] sound is different from the English 'r'. Students will tend to pronounce 'r' as it is pronounced in Persian. Similarly, Persian speakers sometimes pronounce [k] and [g] further forward in their mouths than English speakers (making them more palatal) before certain vowels. They may sound different or foreign to English speakers.

• The Persian language has only six vowel sounds. Three of these are considered long vowels and three are considered short vowels. The long vowels are: [i], [u], and [a]. The short vowels are [æ], [e], and [o]. When learning English, native speakers of Persian may not be able to pronounce all of the English vowels at first. They may replace the English vowel sounds that do not exist in Persian with the nearest Persian vowel.

• Persian speakers often have difficulty with the English vowel [i] as in did as it is a sound that falls between the Persian [i:] and [e]. They may have trouble contrasting seat [si:t] with sit [sit], and sit [sit] with set [set]. In speaking, they will often replace the [i] sound with the Persian vowel [i:], pronouncing 'did' the same as 'deed'.

• Speakers of Persian also have difficulty with the English mid vowel []. The [], or schwa sound found at the beginning of 'ago', is often replaced by Persian speakers with the Persian vowel [e] (which is similar to the English sound in 'bet'). Therefore ago would be pronounced [ego]. In English, many vowels in unstressed syllables are reduced to []. A native English speaker, for example, will pronounced the word 'to' as [tu] if it stand on its own, but if it is used in the sentence, "I went to the store," where it is unstressed, he or she will reduce the tense vowel [u] to []. Persian speakers need to learn not only how to pronounce the [] sound, which does not exist in Persian, but also where to use it, which can be difficult as it is often dependent on stress patterns.

• Persian speakers sometimes have difficulty distinguishing between the English sounds [a] and [] as in the words long [la] and lung [l]. They will often pronounce both of these sounds using the Persian vowel [a].

• Speakers of Persian sometimes have difficulty learning to use the English high back rounded vowel sound [] as in took [tk]. When learning English, they will often replace it with the Persian high back rounded vowel [u], pronouncing took the same way as toque [tuk].

• Most English syllables require a vowel; however, there are cases where liquid and nasal consonants, namely [l], [r], [m], and [n], can be syllabic in English. Speakers of Persian may have trouble pronouncing these sounds as syllabic, and may therefore insert vowels before them when they act syllabically. For example, a speaker of Persian when first learning English might pronounce the words button [btn], bundle [bndl], butter [btr], and rhythm [riðm], in which the final sounds are syllabic consonants, as [bten], [bndel], [bter], and [riðem].

• English syllable-initial consonant clusters are difficult for Persian speakers to say as Persian syllable structure does not allow them. Students will often insert a vowel either before or in the middle of a consonant cluster in order to make pronunciation easier. For example, a Persian speaker might pronounce the word scream as [eskri:m], and the word screw as [sekru] or [sekeru]. Consequently, 'a stamp', might become 'an estamp' [æn estæmp], where having added an initial vowel to the word 'stamp,' the speaker then matches it with the determiner an as is the custom before initial vowels. Students may also have difficulty pronouncing some syllable-final consonant clusters, such those found in the words shorts or vents.

• Speakers of Persian often have a difficult time learning the irregular stress and intonation patterns of English words and sentences, as stress is very regular in the Persian language, generally falling on the last syllable of a word.

Grammar

• The Persian language belongs to the Indo-European language family; therefore, it has grammatical similarities to other Indo-European languages, of which English is one. For this reason, learning English grammar may be easier for speakers of Persian than for speakers of languages that belong to other language families and therefore have greater grammatical differences from English, such as Arabic (an Afro-Asiatic language) or Mandarin (a Sino-Tibetan language). For more information on Persian grammar, see Description..

• Word order in Persian is SOV (Subject-Object-Verb), while English is SVO.

• Speakers of Persian have difficulty learning to use the definite article "the" in English, as there is no word in Persian that performs the same function as the English "the". While there is an indefinite marker in Persian, it is a clitic (-i), not an article like the English "a". Consequently, Persian speakers may tend to omit both definite and indefinite articles when learning English.

• Persian has no distinction between "he" and "she", and no equivalent of "it". Students may use "he" and "she" indiscriminately, as they are not used to making the distinction. They may also use "that" in place of "it".

• In Persian, adjectives generally follow nouns. Students need to learn the placement of adjectives in English.

• The Persian verb system is very consistent; therefore, irregular English verbs may cause difficulties for students. Other difficulties with English verbs may arise where the usage of certain tenses in Persian differs somewhat from English.

• Students may tend to use the infinitive sometimes when the gerund (-ing) is needed. For example, a Persian speaker might say "John avoids to go…" instead of "John avoids going…"

• In Persian, relative clauses include the object pronoun. A Persian speaking student might make the mistake of saying "The doctor whom you talked to her yesterday will be there."

• A common mistake made by Persian speakers learning English is to say "I am agree" instead of "I agree." This is because in Persian, the equivalent of 'am' or 'to do' may be added to the phrase that parallels the English "I agree." A Persian speaker might say "man moafeghat (mirkonam) or (hastam)", which is similar to "I agree (to do) or (am)."

• In the Persian language, coordination is more common than subordination. Consequently, speakers of Persian learning English might overuse the word 'and'.

• Persian speakers sometimes have difficulty with adverbs in English. They tend to put them at the beginning of a sentence.

• In Persian, there is no plural form after a numeral; therefore, a student might say "five big table", instead of "five big tables."

• Persian only has a single relative pronoun to represent both human and nonhuman subjects, so speakers of Persian may not distinguish between 'who' and 'which.'

Writing

• The Persian language uses the Arabic alphabet, which is written and read from right to left. Because of this, speakers of Persian learning to read and write in English will sometimes misread mirror letters (b and d, p and q), or reverse letters in words when they are writing.

• In Persian, each character represents only one sound; therefore, it may take a Persian speaker some time to get used to the fact that in English, sometimes two characters represent a single sound, as in ph for [f], or oo for [u]. It may also take time for Persian speakers to get used to the fact that in English a single written representation may represent more than one sound. Examples of this is are the contrasting sounds represented by the letter 'c' in cape [kejp] and place [plejs], and the contrasting vowel sounds represented by 'ea' in please [pliz] and pleasure [pler].

• In Persian, double consonants (marked with a diacritic) are pronounced doubly except in word final position. In English, however, double consonants are pronounced as though they are single. Students may mispronounce words such as 'litter' or 'missing' if they transfer the Persian rule to English.

• Initially, students may have a strong preference to print rather than do cursive writing.

For more information on the Persian writing system, see Description.

Other

• Students learning to write academic papers in English who have learned to write papers in Persian may need instruction on English customs as to use of secondary sources.

• Students who have learned English academic writing in Iran may need to learn to use the active voice in their writing.