During the past two weeks, the main tasks that I worked on were reading and speaking in Persian. Due to the distress caused by the spread of coronavirus in the world, my language partner (Zari) and I read and watched the news about it. Recently, this virus was spread in Iran causing tens of deaths and infecting hundreds of people. The spread of this virus has had a significant impact on schools and sites of worship. We spent most of our time discussing and analyzing the impact of this virus on Iranian people, society and culture. Most of this news was recorded by BBC Persia. Furthermore, we discussed the danger of such a virus spreading to countries in Afghanistan where sanitation is one of the poorest in the world. The second task that we completed was completing some grammar workshops from the book called, Intermediate Persian: A Grammar and a Workbook.
What we hoped to accomplish this week was to analyze the intersection of the rise of complex issues such as this virus and society. What I learned from the news was that there are hundreds of Iranians and other people who travel from Iran daily. I think this news by itself is a form of awareness to people who are not from Iran and see this country isolated or very strict about traveling. The second major thing that I gained more knowledge on was the distrust between the people and the Iranian government. When the virus was first spread in Iran, the political officials declared it as a scam by the enemies and said that it was not a major problem. When people heard this news, they did not take the precautions that were needed to stop the spread of this virus which lead to tens of people dying. However, once the Iranian people saw the contradictory news between what the government officials and what this virus was doing, it created distrust among the people. It was interesting to see the way language that was used by the government officials in comparison to people who were speaking about this virus. The language used by the government officials was one that was very proper but also in a way that minimized the harm associated with this virus. On the other hand, common people were more panicked and straightforward on how they felt about the spread of this virus in their country. Furthermore, the spread of this virus has caused the Iranian government to cancel Friday prayers and stop people from attending religious shrines.
The past two weeks have been a bit of a different kind of studying with my language partner because we spent most of our time reading and listening to the news. Regardless, my community partner and I continue to work on some of the goals that we had set during the first week such as getting accustomed to typing in Persian. While we focused most of our time on listening and conversing, I also took the time to type some short reflections about what we learned. Additionally, I started using the grammar workbook to reinforce and consolidate my knowledge of certain grammatical points. We continue to work on the two dialects of Faris and Dari.
Similar to the last weeks, the strategies that we used during this week were mainly through watching videos, listening, writing and speaking. I watched videos on BBC Persian along with printing Persian articles from this new agency. Every time I watch or read the news in Persian, I continue to take notes of certain words that I may not be familiar with or if there are any questions that I have about the usage of grammar.
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