Creator: Babak Tabarraee and Mercie Morris
Despite the multi-dimensional significance of Persian, the sources for learning this language have barely been updated. Most of the current textbooks and grammar companions suffer from concentrating on the written (formal, “bookish”) version of the language at the expense of the spoken (informal, colloquial) form, focusing on linguistics rather than pragmatics, providing fully constructed or puzzling samples of poetry as examples, and not distinguishing levels of frequency and usage. To compensate for this shortage, I have been working on a practical grammar companion as an online OER reference book for students and instructors. Seeing grammar as the tool for producing verbal and oral communication in the target language, Persian Grammar in Practice concentrates on pragmatics rather than linguistics. Put simply, the basis of this companion is the practical usage of the language. The book offers grammatical lessons listed as encyclopedic entries. Each entry has two levels. The first, elementary/intermediate level begins with a simple explanation of the concept in an accessible language, followed by abundant examples in color-coded written and spoken forms with audio recordings of native speakers. Then, one or two sections are offered for self-practice in the format of fill-in-the-blank or conversion exercises. This level ends with exercises directly taken from real-life media sources, including newspapers, songs, movies, television shows, social media pages, podcasts, books, etc. The following advanced level of each entry examines a variety of exceptions and/or authentic examples from classical prose and poetry.
