Semester Goals

[Will Cragin]

Semester Goals – By the end of the semester I would like to…- Be able to recognize Farsi characters and read Farsi words.- Greet people and say goodbye to them.- Introduce myself to others and understand their responses and questions.- Be able to ask about different goods – fruit, food, clothes – at a market in Tehran, Iran, and be able to understand their response.- Know basic grammar structure – pronouns, conjugations, negatives, and sentence structure.- I want to be able to read a menu and order from it.- I want to be able to ask Iranians what they think about Americans.Long Term GoalsMy long term goals are to be able to communicate effectively with native speakers of Farsi and Dari. I hope to one day work in a Farsi speaking area, and being able to communicate with the people there would greatly help my work. It is therefore not necessary to be able to read Farsi at an academic level, as I am far more interested in using it colloquially. I have always been fascinated in learning about other peoples and cultures, and in my mind the first step towards any understanding among people of different backgrounds is to be able to speak the same language.