Teaching Persian Subjunctive Mood to Non-Persian Students Based on Cognitive Linguistics (Mental Spaces Theory)

Abstract

It's a long time that teaching Persian to foreigners has established its status as a technical major among other academic fields and in this regard various educational sources have been compiled and developed and Persian teachers apply new principles and methods of foreign language teaching in their classrooms. Meanwhile, findings of linguistics have undoubtedly had a significant influence on the development of teaching methods. One of the new linguistic approaches is cognitive approach. This article tries to examine the use of one of linguistic theories, i.e. mental spaces, in teaching Persian subjunctive mood. Foreign students of Shahed University were chosen in order to explore the effect of this concept on the learning and correct application of subjunctive mood. These students, in two groups of engineering and medicine, were studying Persian as their general course at Shahed University. The results of the study revealed that the use of mental spaces concept is effective and efficient for teaching subjunctive mood.