Persian Courses

MDES 120: It is an elementary level course designed to develop your basic Persian language skills in listening, speaking, writing and reading comprehension. There is no prerequisite for this course. This course was first offered in Fall 2011. It will be offered again in Spring 2013. The objective of the course is to help students: 

• read texts of elementary level difficulty and communicate in Persian on a variety of topics and, therefore, understand spoken Persian in everyday situations.
• write simple sentences with reasonable accuracy.
• develop cultural awareness through additional readings, movies and class discussions.

Students should also be able to do the following main language Tasks: Talk about self and family. Describe a place such as their home, apartment or class. Describe physical and personal characteristics of their friends and family members. Talk about best friends, good or bad experiences, express their feelings and opinions. Be able to converse in Persian by asking and answering simple questions. The Persian curriculum is in line with ACTFL guidelines.

MDES 150 continues MDES 120. This course was first offered in Spring 2012. It will be offered again in Spring 2013. It is designed to further develop basic Persian language skills and help students to:

• read texts of elementary II level difficulty. Communicate and converse in Persian on a variety of topics. Students should also be able to ask and answer open-ended questions in Persian
• write simple accurate sentences and paragraphs. Develop cultural awareness through additional readings, movies and class discussions

MDES 220: It is an intermediate level course designed to develop oral fluency, communicative skills, written expression, and reading comprehension. This course was offered in Fall 2011. It will be offere again in Spring 2013. The objective of the course is to help students: 

• read texts of intermediate level difficulty and communicate in Persian on a variety of topics and, therefore, understand spoken Persian in everyday situations
• write intermediate narrative style paragraphs coherently and with reasonable accuracy
• develop cultural awareness through additional readings, movies and class discussions
• Communicate and converse in Persian and be able to accomplish the following tasks:
  Identifying 5Ws (What, Where, When, Who, and Why)
  Talking about daily routine, work, and study
  Describing home, office, school, work place, and life
  Asking and answering open-ended questions
  Convincing other people

MDES 250 continues MDES 220 and is an intermediate (II) level course designed to develop oral fluency, communicative skills, written expression, and reading comprehension. This course was first offered in Spring 2012. The objectives of the course are to help students to: 

• Read and write texts of intermediate level (II) difficulty.
• Communicate and converse in Persian and be able to accomplish the following real-life tasks:
  • Identifying important information in a text.
  • Talking about daily routine, work, study, and etc.
  • Describing home, office, school, work place, life and etc.
  • Developing analytical thoughts and skills.
  • Developing cultural awareness through additional readings, movies and class discussions.

Advanced Persian I & II: The MESP may offer Advanced Persian courses in Fall 2013 if there is any interest. Advanced Persian I & II are designed to develop advanced language skills in listening, speaking, writing and reading comprehension. These courses help students read texts of advanced level difficulty and communicate in Persian on a variety of topics (politics, culture, religion, minorities, modern literature, Persian classical and modern poetry), write complex and cohesive paragraphs, and develop cultural awareness through additional readings, movies and class discussions.Students will learn variety of real-life language tasks through writing paragraphs, short essays, reports, summaries, and analyzing discourse by comparing similarities and differences.

Note: Please do not register for the above Persian courses if you are a native-speaker of Persian and did your secondary education in Iran. You can ask your advisor to fill out a petition for you and waive your foreign language requirement at USC Language Center.

If you need a d-clearance to register in Persian-I, you must contact USC Language Center. For Persian-II or higher levels, please contact Dr. Nojoumian for a pre-approval first.

Please check this page regularly for further course updates.