I came myself from Fortran / C / C++ to perl.

The best things of Perl at all for me while learning were the hashes (it took a while to get the great advantage of Perl hashes in daily use also i was using simular structures for special cases in C++ before) and the power of regular expressions.

I know, regular expressions are not the best to start with and it took me a while too to learn enough about them to use them, but these two points were - among much others - the brightest moments where I was pleased to use Perl.

Another fine thing is to show them both forms of the for loop. It's nice to use the C form while starting and to switch to the much nicer Perl form later on. But all these tips are a lot subjective. Perhaps this could give you a hint? Good luck anyway.