In this talk, I present an overview of the various factors that raise difficulties for a speaker of English learning Persian. Persian and English are both Indo-European languages and thus share a number of linguistic features, yet a number of issues make Iranian Persian and Dari Persian more difficult than more commonly taught languages. These include the Arabic-based writing system, lack of cognate vocabulary, morphological patterns borrowed from Arabic, verb-final word order with relatively free movement, and light verb constructions. The effects of interference from English and diglossia are also discussed.
I argue, however, that many of the difficulties of the language can be simplified for students if we use linguistic insight to help the learners detect the existing patterns. This is demonstrated using the properties of plural formation and the patterns found in the choice of the light verb. Hence, what may seem difficult often follows distinct patterns that can be generalized, thus helping students avoid the need for rote learning methods. In addition, the talk presents an introduction to computational linguistics with applications for Persian and shows how a number of computational systems could be used in the classroom to facilitate both teaching and learning by helping to discover language patterns in authentic media or by generating automated feedback to the student.