Evaluation of Literary Texts Derived from Teaching Persian to non-Persian Books: An Integrated Approach

Literary texts can be used in language teaching/learning programs as a means of teaching the language. Moreover, potent language learners consider reading literature as a language-learning goal. In this regard, it is of utmost importance to design, develop, and re-evaluate language learning materials with regard to the literature. The present study was thus motivated to evaluate the literary texts in teaching Persian to non-Persian books in order to help the improvement of Persian teaching programs. To this end, an integrated approach was employed to investigate different aspects of the mentioned books in terms of language skills, cultural concepts, communicative functions, type and genre of the texts, type of homework, grammatical structures, and presentation of literary texts. The obtained results indicated that the perceptual-motor speaking skills were ignored in most cases. Moreover, most literary texts were indicative of intercultural aspects rather than cross-cultural or intercultural ones. In addition, most literary texts were not related to the the grammatical point raised in the unit, and the communication functions in literary texts were presented at a low level. Therefore, there were some weaknesses in the presentation of literary texts, especially communicative functions, perceptual motor speaking practices, and intracultural concepts. Moreover, all language skills were not equally presented in the investigated books.
Extended Abstract:
The literary texts of each culture and language have their own unique forms and content. The implementation of such unique and authentic texts can provide learners with the opportunity to improve their language learning skills. Persian literature with the ancient history, variety of subjects, and different genres is a rich source of Persian language, which can effectively contribute to Persian teaching programs designed for non-Persian learners. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to design and develop appropriate training materials and evaluate existing resources from this perspective. In this regard, the present study was conducted on five Persian language teaching books, entitledPersian Language Teaching(Samareh, 2005), Let’s Learn Persian (Zolfaghari, et al., 2003), Persian Language (Saffar Moghadam, 2008), Learning Persian in Persian(Fardi, et al., 2015), Novin Persian Teaching(Ghabool, 2016). It is worth mentioning that the main criterion for selecting these books was their being taught in accredited educational centers to a large number of students with a variety of backgrounds.
The employed framework for the material evaluation was an integrated approach which could address both the form and the content of the literary texts in the mentioned books. The approach was inspired by the theories put forward by Cunningsworth (1995), McDonough, J., & Shaw (2013), Mukundan, Nimehchisalem, and Hajimohammadi (2011) and Tomlinson (2011). The proposed model for the evaluation of literary texts in Persian language teaching books to non-Persian speakers consists of two main parts of form and content evaluations.
The evaluation of the form aims to examine the structure and organization of the material, the claims made by the authors in the introduction section of the books considering the form. Accordingly, the following issues were investigated.

Does the book have a well-prepared introduction, including the author's view of the literary nature of the language and the methods of teaching literary texts in language teaching?
Are the audiences and context of the book identified?
Have the literary texts been compiled based on the needs assessment of the audience? And has this point been mentioned in the introduction section of the book?
Do the literary texts indicate the grammatical points raised in the lesson?
Are the employed literary texts at different levels original authentic texts or simplified texts?
Has the question of the authenticity of the text been taken into account considering literary texts?
Have teaching materials, such as teacher guides and multimedia files, been used to teach literary texts?

The content evaluation, on the other hand, considers the following points:

What are the types (i.e., classical and contemporary) and genres (prose and verse) of the literary texts used in the books?
Which language skill the literary texts are used mainly for? In other words, to what extent are language skills taught by literary text?
What is the use of literary texts?
What is the frequency of the concepts of cross-cultural, intercultural, and intracultural in the literary texts used in the book?
Do the literary texts of the book have a communicative function?
How are the assignments designed for literary texts?
What were the criteria for the organization of the content? Are these items classified based on any specific criterion?

In order to answer the questions in the proposed model for evaluating literary texts in Persian language teaching books to non-Persian speakers, the variables of language skills, cultural concepts, communicative functions, type and genre of the texts, type of homework, grammatical structures, as well as presentation and authenticity of literary texts were investigated. Therefore, the proposed model was composed of 16 statements, out of which 7 are bipolar indices (yes/no) and 9 are Likert-type statements ranging from many to none. In order to determine the validity and reliability of the evaluation indices, two evaluators were asked to re-evaluate the indices.
The obtained results indicated that there was no instruction about the nature of literary language and the method of teaching literary texts in the investigated books. In other words, the selection of literary texts was not based on the needs assessment of the learners and readers. However, the authors of all the books clearly defined the context expected for Teaching Persian in Persian. It should also be mentioned that all the investigated books have a teachers’ guide but not Novin Teaching Persian Language. Regarding the authenticity of the texts, it was found that Learn Persian and Novin Teaching Persian Language utilized original sources. Moreover, the close examination of the books indicated that prose is the most preferred type of literary texts in all the books except for Learn Persian. Considering culture, the obtained results were indicative of no intracultural presentation of literary texts. The findings also suggested that literary texts were not presented as highly communicative and the texts did not present any specific grammatical structure. As was observed, learners’ reading skill was highly focused in these literary texts followed by writing, listening, and speaking skills. Although literary texts were mostly used as the main text of the unit, the designed assignments and practices in the books encourage individual participation rather than teamwork or group work. To conclude, it is important to re-consider the implementation of literary texts in Persian language teaching books.