Acknowledgment

First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my students—the source of inspiration for this book. Their motivation to learn Persian, and their need for comprehensive online learning materials encouraged me to start this journey.

Words fall short to express my deepest appreciation for Regina Gong and her team members, who work for Open Educational Resources (OER) at Michigan State University Libraries. Without Regina and her team, this project would not be possible; they have helped me at every stage in this book. I would also like to express my gratitude to my co-author Dr. Rajiv Ranjan, without his help, guidance and his OER textbooks ( Basic Hindi and Basic Urdu), I wouldn’t have been able to complete this book. I also want to express my appreciation to Ms. Danielle Steider, LCTL program coordinator, for her support and constructive feedback.

I acknowledge the support that I received from the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Culture at MSU. I am forever grateful to all my language teachers at MSU and elsewhere, who directly and indirectly have shaped and enriched my teaching skill.

Last, but not least, I want to express thanks to my family, who never stopped believing in me, and have always been very supportive. I also am thankful to Ms. Hajar Seyed-Nejad who helped me with audio recordings of the conversations.

I am also grateful to many previous books (Persian in use book, Persian learner, Persian grammar) and Persian introductory materials which guided me to organize and design this Basic Persian OER textbook.