A2.1 – Expanding Communication

Expanding Communication in the Present

In this chapter you will move from single words and very simple sentences to small, meaningful conversations. You already know basic greetings, pronouns, the verb “to be,” and simple SOV sentences. Now you will start to talk about what you and other people do in daily life, when and how often things happen, and where actions take place. Everything in this chapter prepares you for four detailed subchapters: Present Tense (Simple Present), Common Verbs, Adverbs of Time/Frequency, and Prepositions. Here we focus on how these elements work together in communication.

From Is/Am/Are to “Do”

Until now you have mainly used the verb “to be,” which in Persian is the verb “بودن” but in the present tense appears as short endings: “هستم,” “هستی,” “هست,” or in colloquial Persian “هستم / هستی / هست / ایم / اید / اند” often reduced to “ام / ای / است / ایم / اید / اند” or even shorter in speech. This allowed you to say things like “I am Ali,” “She is Iranian,” or “We are happy.”

To expand your communication, you need verbs that describe real actions and states: “to go,” “to come,” “to eat,” “to work,” “to study,” “to like,” and many others. In Persian these verbs appear with a personal ending that tells you who is doing the action. The person information is already built into the verb, which is why Persian can often drop the subject pronoun.

For example, to say “I go” you usually do not need the word “من” if the context is clear, because the verb itself shows that the subject is first person singular. This will be explained in detail in the “Present Tense (Simple Present)” subchapter, but here you should understand the general idea: you combine a “verb stem” with a personal ending to talk about actions in the present.

When you start using action verbs with “to be,” your communication becomes much richer. You can say who you are and what you do, where you are and where you go, what you like and what you do not like. This is the core of the “Expanding Communication” level.

Communicating about Daily Routines

At A2 level, your main topic is daily life. You now begin to describe your normal day: when you wake up, where you work or study, what you eat, and how you spend your free time. Persian usually uses the simple present tense for habits and routines, just like English.

You already know the basic Subject–Object–Verb order. To talk about routines, you place time expressions and sometimes place expressions before the verb as well. Even before you know all forms of the present tense, you can already understand the structure.

A typical routine sentence might be: “In the morning I go to work.” In Persian, the time “in the morning” and the place “to work” stand in the middle of the sentence, and the verb comes at the end. When you expand your communication, you learn to move these building blocks around the verb while keeping the SOV backbone.

You will also learn to distinguish between “always,” “often,” “sometimes,” and “never” with simple Persian adverbs. These will let you talk not only about what you do, but also how frequently you do it. For example, you will be able to say that you always drink tea, but only sometimes drink coffee.

As you talk about daily routines, you will see how important prepositions are. Persian prepositions such as “in,” “at,” “to,” and “from” typically come before the noun, but the whole prepositional phrase comes before the verb. This pattern will be used throughout your studies, so getting used to it now will help a lot later.

Making Yourself Understood with Simple Verbs

To expand your communication, you need a core group of very common verbs that you can combine with many different nouns and time expressions. You will learn verbs for movement, speech, mental activities, work, study, and daily actions.

At this level, it is more important to be able to use a small set of high‑frequency verbs confidently than to know many rare verbs. A few well‑used verbs, combined with the vocabulary you already know, allow you to express a wide range of ideas. For example, the verb “to go” can combine with “home,” “school,” “work,” “Iran,” “cinema,” and many other places. The same is true for “to eat” and “to drink,” which connect with many foods and drinks you will learn in later chapters.

Persian also has many compound verbs: a noun or adjective plus a light verb like “کردن” or “شدن.” You will have a full chapter on compound verbs later, so here you only meet a few very basic ones that are absolutely necessary for communication, especially “to do” and “to work.” Even with these few compounds, your ability to describe real life grows quickly.

When speaking, Persian often uses a shorter colloquial form of common verbs. In this chapter you will be introduced to both formal and common spoken forms for the main verbs so that you recognize them when you hear them. You do not have to master all regional and informal variants now, but you should start feeling how formal and informal speech sound different.

Talking about Time and Frequency

You have already seen simple time words like “today,” “yesterday,” and “tomorrow” in earlier dialogues. In this A2.1 group, you start to organize your day with more detail: “in the morning,” “at night,” “every day,” “on Fridays,” “sometimes,” “often,” and so on.

These adverbs of time and frequency usually stand before the verb and after the subject, although they can sometimes move for emphasis. If you keep them in the middle of the sentence, your speech will sound natural and easy to understand.

Persian uses simple patterns to express “every day,” “every week,” or “every morning.” You repeat this pattern with different time words instead of learning many completely new phrases. Rather than memorizing long sentences, you can think of them as small blocks that you can reorder and reuse.

You will also learn how some time words combine with numerals to express “two times,” “three times,” or “once a week.” These patterns are very productive and will be useful far beyond this level. The detailed formation of all these time expressions is covered in the “Adverbs of Time and Frequency” and “Time Expressions” subchapters, so here you simply need to know that they will serve as tools that you put around your verbs.

Saying Where Actions Happen

With new prepositions, you can now say where things are and where they happen. This includes being “in” a place, going “to” a place, coming “from” a place, and being “at” a location like work or school. Prepositions connect nouns to the verb and are essential if you want to say more than just “I go” or “I work.”

The general pattern in Persian is that the preposition stands directly before the noun. The whole prepositional phrase then appears somewhere before the verb, usually toward the middle or near the end of the sentence, but still before the final verb. You already know objects before the verb, so you can think of prepositional phrases as another kind of object that also stands before the verb.

With prepositions you will also be able to answer “where” questions. You know how to form yes/no questions from earlier units, and now you start to answer detailed “where” questions using simple vocabulary for common places. A full description of individual prepositions will come in the dedicated subchapter on prepositions, but in this chapter you should focus on their role: they link your verbs with nouns to give more precise information.

Expressing Basic Requests and Needs

When you travel, work, or live in a Persian speaking environment, it is very important to ask for things politely. You have already learned basic polite expressions in earlier lessons. At this level you connect those polite words with verbs to make short requests. You will see how Persian uses modal expressions and specific polite forms of verbs to soften requests.

Although the full system of requests will be explained in the “Making Requests” subchapter, here you should understand that you can already create many useful sentences with the tools from this unit. You use personal pronouns, common verbs, simple prepositions, and time words, and then add polite markers to turn a simple statement into a request.

This ability to request things, ask for help, or ask someone to do something is a central part of expanding communication. Even without complex grammar, you can get what you need and manage everyday situations in Persian.

Combining Everything in Short Dialogues

The real goal of this unit is not knowing many separate rules, but being able to combine them in actual communication. When you speak, you rarely use only one new element. Instead, you naturally mix subject pronouns, verbs, adverbs of time, prepositions, and politeness formulas.

For example, you might introduce your daily routine, ask someone about theirs, and then make a simple plan together. You will start to understand short, natural dialogues where two people talk about where they live, where they work or study, at what time they do things, and how often they do them. With each new word and pattern you add, your “communication space” becomes larger.

By the end of this A2.1 “Expanding Communication” group, you should be able to hold small conversations about everyday life in the present time: who you are, what you do, where you go, when and how often you do things, and how to ask others to do something in a polite way.

Vocabulary Table for This Section

This table gathers important vocabulary that appeared or was conceptually central in this overview. Many of these words will be studied in detail in the following subchapters, but they already form the core of your communication at A2.1.