Teaching Persian through Short Stories: When Worlds of Words Collide

In this paper, I delve into the layered cultural and linguistic competencies achieved by L2 learners through reading Iranian and Afghan short stories, and the learning outcomes of teaching Persian by reading the short texts created by popular authors such as Hedayat, Ravanipur and Soltanzadeh who focus on oral communities that connect to each other through folklore and folktales. Oral versus written and formal versus conversational Persian will be part of this ongoing research as the premise of the teaching pedagogy of applying short stories to language learning not only ties vocabulary in context to distinguishing and differentiating public versus private language, but also helps the students apply the learned vocabulary in appropriate presentational, interpretive and interpersonal modes. While reading short stories helps students with reading competency and sounding out Persian utterances, delving into the content of tales familiarizes them with the cultural complexities of Iranian and Afghan communities in various times and geographies. In addition, as a social process in a wholistic approach, learning Persian through short stories invites L2 learners to both engage with the collective cultural base of a text, and appreciate the individual behind the story; the author.