For this assignment, I taught my roommate Amanda how to conjugate verbs into the past tense. Unlike conjugating in the present tense, the past tense is completely regular in Persian. Amanda is from Puerto Rico and thus speaks English and Spanish fluently, and is also proficient in Italian, so I didn't foresee her having any trouble with this activity.
I first taught her the pronouns in Persian. Man (I), toh (you), oo (he, she, and it), ma (we), shoma (formal singular you or plural you), and anha (they). After about ten minutes she had them memorized. I then taught her the suffixes for each conjugation:
-am for man
-i for toh
no ending for oo
-im for ma
-id for shoma
-and for anha
I also told her how to change the infinitive to the conjugated form -- take off the "-an" infinitive ending and add the suffix to the stem. After practicing for a few minutes, she was able to say very simple sentences in Farsi, such as "I went" (man raftam), "he went" (oo raft), "they spoke" (anha sohbat kardand), or "we spoke" (ma sohbat kardim). By giving her the infinitive (in these cases, raftan and sohbat kardan), she was able to convert them to a sentence in the past.
This learning activity was very effective. It mirrored the way my language partner Mirwais taught me to conjugate verbs in the past. Occasionally Amanda would forget one of the pronouns or the suffixes, and we would go back to review. It reminded me that constant practice, repetition, and review is key to mastering a language task such as this one. Since conjugating verbs in the past is so easy and formulaic, this did not take very long, but a more complicated grammatical structure would definitely need more time.
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