Learn Persian Through Rumi's Masnavi
3 weeks, from Mar 18, 2024 to Apr 05, 2024

Online

Applications for this course are closed, check out upcoming courses.

For inquiries please contact [email protected]

Check Upcoming Persian Language Courses

Persian Language Summer School, from Jun 23, 2024 to Aug 30, 2024 (10 weeks (or 4-9 weeks))

The Armenian School of Languages and Cultures - ASPIRANTUM, is organizing a Persian language summer school in Yerevan, Armenia. You can start the program on June 23, June 30, or July 7, 2024, and stay up to 10 weeks until August 30, 2024. If you prefer a shorter program, there are options for 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 weeks. To get more information and apply, please refer to the details below.

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Persian Language Semester Program, from Aug 18, 2024 to Dec 06, 2024 (16 weeks)

Armenian School of Languages and Cultures - ASPIRANTUM is organizing the seventh 16-week Persian language semester program in Yerevan, Armenia. The seventh 16-week semester program of Persian language will start on August 18, 2024, and will last till December 6, 2024 (111 days, 300 hours of Persian language instruction).

Learn More

Armenian School of Languages and Cultures - ASPIRANTUM is inviting you to apply to the “Learn Persian through Rumi’s Masnavi” online course. The full course will last for 3 weeks. This online course will start on March 15, 2024 and will last till April 05, 2024.

The testimonials of ASPIRANTUM Persian language summer, winter and online school alumni are available here: https://aspirantum.com/testimonials

“Learn Persian through Rumi’s Masnavi” is a near advanced course and students will need to have a solid background of Persian with at least intermediate skills in Persian reading comprehension.

The “Learn Persian through Rumi’s Masnavi” online course will help the participants to master skills in Persian, particularly in reading and interpreting Persian classical poetry, deepen their knowledge of the Masnavi and learn the various meanings of Persian words.

This course will be organized on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays each week (4 days each week, 12 days over three weeks) and will include 42 hours of intensive Persian teaching (3.5 hours during each day). In addition to reading and discussing the Masnavi every day, the students will also read an article in Persian by an Iranian scholar about a unique aspect of the Masnavi. These readings are available in our syllabus. Every day the class will start with a discussion of the homework and the mentioned article. Following this, the class will read, interpret and decipher one or several stories from the Masnavi. Each day's class will end with discussion and questions.

The full syllabus of the “Learn Persian through Rumi’s Masnavi” online course is available here: https://aspirantum.com/curriculum/learn-persian-through-rumi-masnavi-syllabus 

We are planning to start the online classes at 9 PM Yerevan time. This time was chosen in order to accommodate students from both European and American countries. Depending on the geographic location of applicants, the time may be changed and all applicants will be informed about these changes prior to the start of the course.

Each four-hour day will be divided into the following sections:

First class - homework and discussion of homework article
Break
Second class - Reading Masnavi
Break
Third class - Reading Masnavi, Discussion and Questions

During the “Learn Persian through Rumi’s Masnavi” classes, the following components will be covered every day to foster the Persian language knowledge of the participants:

Grammar: Every day, we will cover the main grammatical concepts of the Masnavi along with their parallels in modern Persian.
Vocabulary: During the 3-week course it is anticipated that the participants will learn around 600 or more Persian words that will facilitate their further study of Classical Persian literature.
Listening: The classes are scheduled in a way so that each day participants will also listen to audio recordings of the Masnavi.
Speaking: Every day the classes will push the students to exercise their speaking abilities through discussions, conversations and role-plays about various stories of the Masnavi.
Writing: Each day the participants will have assignments and homework to complete for the next day.
Reading: Every day, students will read and discuss the text of the Masnavi. The corpus of texts to be read and discussed during the classes will include various stories from the Masnavi.

This Persian language school is designed for participants who want to make well-grounded progress in their knowledge of the Persian language, deepen their knowledge of Persian grammar, the literary language and classical poetry through Rumi’s Masnavi.

The “Learn Persian through Rumi’s Masnavi” online course will have 1 group of up to 12 participants. The participants must have at least an intermediate level of Persian knowledge before starting this course with ASPIRANTUM.

ASPIRANTUM’s Persian language schools are organized in a way that undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and professors as well as anyone interested in learning Persian through the Masnavi will benefit from it. Thus, everyone with an intermediate level of Persian is welcome to apply and participate in ASPIRANTUM’s “Learn Persian through Rumi’s Masnavi” course from March 15, 2024 till April 05, 2024, online.

Deadline:

The deadline to apply to the 3 weeks  “Learn Persian through Rumi’s Masnavi” online course is February 14, 2024.

To apply, please fill in the application form below.

Participation fee:

The participation fee for the two-week course is $900.

Discount 1

If you apply before January 15, 2024, and pay by January 17, 2024, the participation fee will be 700 USD.

Discount 2

Need-based discounts will also be available. Please send an email to [email protected] describing your situation and we will consider your case individually.

Each participant of the online school may find sources of financial aid from their own University/School/Community or other relevant foundations.

Letter of Invitation

If necessary, ASPIRANTUM will provide applicants with an official letter to support scholarship applications.

Maximum capacity in the group: 12 students

Communication medium: The online course will be organized through Zoom.

To apply please fill in the application form below.

Registered participants should send 100% of the participation fee before February 21, 2024 online via debit/credit (Visa or Mastercard).

For questions and inquiries, please contact [email protected] or Whatsapp Dr. Khachik Gevorgyan +374-91-557978

To apply, please fill in the application form below.

Testimonials

  • “As a long time and advanced learner of Persian, I was highly impressed by the quality of the instruction and gained myself much from it.”
    Asael Benyami
    MA student, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
  • “The Shāhnāma course was a great way to learn Persian by sparing with a classical Persian text. Students left with a better understanding of Firdawsī’s magnum opus (shāhkār) and will never envision the Shāhnāma the same way again.”
    Christopher "Carson" Conlon
    MPhil, Islamic Studies and History, University of Oxford, UK
  • “I shall look forward, time and circumstances permitting, to participating in some of the other Persian courses that Aspiratum plans in the future.”
    Husain Kazmi MD
    Independent Scholar, USA
  • “The course ”Learn Persian Through the Shahname” in which I took part in September 2020 was a wonderful experience.”
    Piotr Szustakiewicz
    MA student, University of Warsaw, Poland

Teachers

Vardan Voskanian profile image

Vardan Voskanian

Instructor of Persian Language

Vardan Voskanian has 22 years’ experience of teaching Persian to foreign students in an unforgettable way.

Course Syllabus

Learn Persian through Rumi's Masnavi Syllabus

The course is about one of Rumi’s Masterpieces, the Masnavi Ma’navi. The aim of this course is to advance and improve participants’ knowledge of the Persian language through studying the mostly colloquial language style of the work as is still practiced by Persian speakers. The conversation and discussion units of each teaching day will provide the participants with a chance for more interactive immersion experiences. The aim is that by the end of the course the participants are expected to be able to recognize the widely used verses of the Masnavi as proverbs and metaphors in everyday language. Each day will focus on intense readings of the Masnavi, explanations of difficult words, lexical variations and verse semantics, as well as the individual words and their function within the tales and stories.

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Applications for this course are closed

For inquiries please contact [email protected]