1 CHAPTER 16 TEACHING PERSIAN TO SPEAKERS OF OTHER LANGUAGES Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi and Anousha Sedighi 1. Introduction This chapter discusses teaching Persian to speakers of other languages from a variety of perspectives. The format of this chapter is as follows. Section 2 provides a short account on the history of teaching Persian as a second language 1 . Section 3 discusses the current status of teaching Persian as a second language both in the east and the west. Section 4 discusses second language acquisition studies on Persian and Section 5 focuses on recent trends on pedagogy and assessment. Section 6 investigates the development of the instructional material in general and the available Persian language textbooks. Section 7 provides a discussion on current issues and challenges of teaching Persian to speakers of other languages and Section 8 summarizes the chapter. 1 Many studies differentiate the two terms “Teaching Persian as a Second Language” and “Teaching Persian as a Foreign Language” and the important distinction between the two has to do with whether the instruction takes place in Persian speaking countries – Iran, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, or in an area where Persian is not generally spoken. In other words, the main difference between the two is the environment outside of the classroom. Studies on second language acquisition however only use the term “Second Language/L2” and define a second language as any language other than one’s first language. Therefore, the third or fourth language one learns will still be second language in our definition. In this article, we adopt the latter format and use the term “second language” when referring to “Teaching Persian to speakers of other languages”. DRAFT. NOT FOR QUOTATION OR COPYING.