Two Myths About Teaching Kazakh
An article that has recently appeared on Azattyq makes a number of debatable claims.
The first is that “in order to learn Kazakh, one should know Russian.” This is difficult to sustain. From my own teaching experience, I know that even if learners don’t know Russian, they can acquire the Cyrillic alphabet in a short period of time. The alphabet is the only element that Kazakh and Russian have in common. Unlike Russian, Kazakh is an agglutinative language that is based on sound harmony and on adding suffixes to the roots of words. Moreover, with the exception of a few Russian loanwords, Kazakh derives most of its vocabulary from ancient Turkic, Arabic and Persian.
Second, the article claims that it is difficult to learn Kazakh because there is no methodology of teaching Kazakh. It seems that many people adhere to this opinion, but I think that many linguists and teachers of Kazakh would disagree. Especially because this opinion appears to be an implicit criticism of Kazakh teachers. What is a methodology of teaching? It is a set of techniques that teachers apply in their teaching. It is not some kind of super-theory that a ministry of education should provide. After all, the methods that have been proposed over the years (the grammar-translation method, the direct method, the audio-lingual method, the communicative method) are purely theoretical.
In practice, good teachers (and most Kazakh teachers are good) integrate a variety of techniques in their lessons, because their purpose is to improve all 4 language skills: reading, writing, comprehension and speaking. What Kazakh teachers need is not an abstract methodology, but more resources. They need professionally made books and dictionaries, and training seminars where they can exchange their teaching experiences. Internet forums would be very helpful, too, except that most Kazakh teachers don’t have access to the internet.
I am curious to hear what my readers think about these issues.
To read this post in Kazakh, click here.
Completely agree with all your points!
Here in the UK I hear the same complaints from teachers of Russian – materials, resources and opportunities to exchange experiences and network are badly wanted and needed.
Indeed, speaking Russian could be seen as a disadvantage in that students can be “lazy” and rely on being able to use a Russian word when they don’t know the Kazakh one.
In my experience the emphasis on methodologies rather than practices is a Soviet hangover and can make learning a language deadly boring for teacher and student (unless one is a complete grammar geek) if used too rigidly.
First and foremost teachers need to have a passion for the language that they’re teaching and an ability to be flexible in how they teach, responding to the needs of their students.
Thanks for an interesting post and all the best for the forthcoming New Year.
CXW
December 26, 2009 at 2:47 pm