Faezeh Marsous; Ferdos Agagolzade; Aliyeh Kord Zafaranlu Kambuziya
Abstract
Today, we see fruitful efforts in the field of Persian language teaching; however, there are still shortcomings due to a lack of sufficient studies as well as fundamental research in this field. Word selection and scientific teaching of words are those areas that have ambiguities, such as the principles ...
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Today, we see fruitful efforts in the field of Persian language teaching; however, there are still shortcomings due to a lack of sufficient studies as well as fundamental research in this field. Word selection and scientific teaching of words are those areas that have ambiguities, such as the principles of selecting Persian language teaching words, word leveling, and how to teach them. lexical frequency and word applicability are two principles in teaching second or foreign-language words. This research aims to compare the frequency of educational words in the Shiraz and Parfa series, as well as the frequency with which their educational words appear. As a result, the lexical frequencies of these two sets were compared. The word frequency of these two sets was then compared to three lists of words. Data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel software, pivot tables, and formula writing methods. The results show that a total of 864 words, or more than 30% of the words in both sets, are shared. The Shiraz series contains 47.15 percent of its vocabulary in at least one list, while the Parfa series encompasses 38.75 percent of its vocabulary in at least one list. When the results are compared, the Shiraz series outperforms the Parfa series in terms of lexical frequency, with roughly half of its educational vocabulary appearing at a minimum in one of the selected frequency lists. IntroductionToday, teaching the Persian Language, as a branch of applied linguistics, is one of the significant goals of the cultural organizations and also of the Country’s Comprehensive Scientific Map. Despite the fruitful efforts and actions taken for this purpose, a lot has yet to be done before achieving scientific goals in the Persian language teaching domain and the shortage of some fundamental studies in this domain remains evident, which makes eminent the need for more studies in the field. One of these shortages is the selection of vocabulary content appropriate for the language learning levels in Persian language teaching books and syllabi. Studies in language teaching domains, including Meara (1980) and Nation (1990), indicate that many of the language learners’ problems in language production and reception result from their low vocabulary knowledge (Kang, 1995:43). Basically, it is impossible to learn a language without vocabulary [Knowledge] (Rivers,1981:242).In regard to this, the importance and key role of vocabulary in second or foreign language teaching in general and in syllabi, teaching methods, and testing approaches specifically is noticeable and salient. The selection of educational content suitable for language learners’ levels and goals has a significant role in learning and achieving educational goals. Shahbazi (1387) introduces six main criteria and several sub-criteria for selecting vocabulary one of which is frequency. According to Willkins (1972:118), frequency is one of the most important criteria and usually, not necessary, the most useful words are the most frequent ones.A question that is put forward is how relevant the vocabulary in Persian language teaching books is to the Persian language vocabulary corpora. For this purpose, the present study seeks to investigate the vocabulary selection in the two-textbook series of Shiraz and Parfa regarding their frequency and compare the frequency of their vocabulary. The reason for choosing the two series is the two principles of being up-to-date and common. Research Question(s) How relevant is the vocabulary in each of the two-textbook series of Shiraz and Parfa to the three corpora’s word lists or the word lists in question? How is the vocabulary dispersion in these two-textbook series? How relevant are the vocabulary frequencies of each level in these two Persian teaching series to one another?There are no hypotheses for these questions and they will be answered through statistical investigation and analysis.Literature ReviewAccording to Shahbazi (1387), proper perfect teaching has four fundamental steps selection of teaching content, grading teaching material, teaching, and evaluation. He believes that vocabulary is one of the fundamental components of language and it is very important to teach it. He says that in traditional language teaching methods, vocabulary is selected based on language intuition, experience, and taste, which is likely to be erroneous.Shahrokhi’s study (1395) was conducted with the aim of vocabulary standardization in teaching the Persian language to speakers of other languages and putting forward a vocabulary list appropriate for different proficiency levels in the common European of Reference for Languages. The method of this research is qualitative content analysis and its tool is the researcher’s checklists and Delphi consensus study (consulting linguists). So, a standard framework for AZOOFA (Teaching Persian Language & Culture to Speakers of Other Languages) learning, teaching, and evaluating along with a word list and graded functions and notions appropriate for the four levels of novice 1, novice 2, intermediate1, intermediate 2 was achieved.Jahangardi (1395) sought to investigate the extent to which the vocabulary in books for teaching Persian to speakers of other languages overlaps and corresponds to the most frequent Persian language vocabulary. The word list in each of the books and the learner’s corpus was compared to the word frequency list of the base corpus. The results indicated that, in terms of vocabulary learning levels, the book sometimes presents only 2% of the frequent Persian language vocabulary to the learners.MethodologyThe series’ vocabularies were collected from their vocabulary indices and were compared to each other in terms of word frequency; after editing and POS coding. Then, the series’ word frequencies were compared to the word lists from Sahraee et al. (1398), Ne’matzadeh et al. (1390) and Assi (1398). The data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel.ConclusionThe preset study sought to investigate vocabulary selection in Persian language teaching and, particularly, in Shiraz and Parfa, the two textbook series. The research questions are as follows:How relevant is the vocabulary in each of the two-textbook series of Shiraz and Parfa to the three corpora’s word lists or the word lists in question?How is the vocabulary dispersion in these two-textbook series?How relevant is the vocabulary frequencies of each level in these two Persian teaching series to one another?To answer these questions, the two series’ vocabularies were collected and compared first to one another and then to the three noted Persian corpora or word lists, namely Sahraee et al. (1398), Ne’matzadeh et al. (1390) and Assi (1398).Comparing the results, the answer to the first question is that the Shiraz series, having roughly 50% of its vocabulary in common with at last one of the selected frequency lists, is in a better situation regarding vocabulary frequency, compared to the Parfa series. Nevertheless, both series need to include more applied frequent words suitable for applied functions in the target society, paying attention to teaching necessities including applied educational content, learners’ need, learners’ age, learning goals, etc.The answer to the second question is that, in both series, the number of words taught in each level increases up to the intermediate level and then decreases during higher levels. The bell curve of vocabulary dispersion in each series has a scientific and logical justification and reveals that the teaching load is mainly at intermediate levels in both series.The answer to the third question is that the highest percentage of vocabulary overlap is in the elementary and pre-intermediate levels, namely between the first volume of the Parfa series and the first and second volumes of the Shiraz series. Also, the lowest percentage of vocabulary overlap is in the upper-intermediate and advanced levels, namely the third volume of Parfa and the fourth volume of the Shiraz series. These results seem to result partly from the difference between the books in terms of proficiency levels.
