An Interactive CD-ROM for Farsi Language Learning

The U.S. and many other industrial countries face a growing need for second language and cultural awareness training for business and industry. Reliance on English is no longer sufficient for trade in the world market, since the most important markets for American goods and services are non-English-speaking areas, especially in growing countries in Asia and the Middle East. In recent years there has been a growing need to offer courses in the less commonly taught languages, including Arabic, Indonesian, and Farsi. Consequently there is a growing need for educational resources to support this training. Finding instructional materials for the less commonly taught languages is frequently a challenge. For the beginners or introductory grade levels in particular, there are almost no textbooks, grammar books, or dictionaries. Finding interactive multimedia materials is even harder. This means that there is no easy or fast way of learning these languages. For example, although there are thousands of potential learners of Farsi in the U.S. and other countries, it is extremely difficult to offer Farsi as a language course on any given campus due to the heterogeneous backgrounds and needs of students. This project will produce a self-learning interactive CD-ROM to be used by anybody, anywhere, anytime.