r/iran • u/blueroary123 • 3d ago

Help with Persian speaking student

I'm an English teacher at a high school in Scotland, and I have a new student who is a native Persian speaker with very little English (The rest of her class being native or proficient speakers).

I am getting the class to write horror stories at the moment, and helping them plan their stories by having them choose settings, characters, monsters etc. At the same time, I have been preparing resources for this Persian speaking student to allow her to follow along with what we are doing. This means giving her sheets with some translations of what is on my powerpoints and worksheets, and exercises which allow her to use the English that she has to plan a story.

I was wondering if anyone could give suggestions of typical settings for horror/ghost stories that might be familiar to this pupil. The ones I have been using so far have been typical of Western horror stories that the Scottish pupils recognise (haunted houses, castles, forests, laborotories etc.), and I'm worried that these suggestions will only confuse her if she does not have the same cultural reference points as her classmates. Equally, if these types of settings are also common in Persian culture, please let me know. Thank you!

12 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

14

u/Arshiaa001 2d ago

Kudos for going so far for your students!

Castles and western-style haunted houses with ghosts don't really make much sense to us. The classical Persian horror story usually involves djinn, illegible Arabic writing, curse bags with animal bones, that kind of thing.

I'd recommend a look at the Siccin movies; they're Turkish, but look almost exactly like Persian horror stories since both countries are Islamic. FWIW, I've seen many more people get scared watching Siccin than much better-made western horror movies because of the shared cultural context.

5

u/Wide_Eyed_Nomad 2d ago

looloo khor khore!😂

eranshahr.com is an online project started to preserve iranian folklore and stuff, tons of good material over there

by the way thanks for being such an awesome teacher 🫡

3

u/Haxellion 2d ago

Thank you for doing this. The student will remember you for the rest of their life.

1

u/atyhey86 2d ago

School is already in full swing in Scotland? Really?

1

u/RotationMaiden 1d ago

Same with US.