More Russian Language Classes For Tajik Schools

The Tajik Ministry of Education has increased mandatory hours for the Russian language at schools from two to four hours a week, Die Deutsche Welle reports. Although Russian has an official status of international language the area of its usage has significantly shrunk for the past several years.

Russian-speaking population constitutes only two percent of the seven million population, the number of Russian language schools has dropped since independence in 1991 while Russian literature was taken out of the school curriculum.

However, the language of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky is getting increasingly popular among the Tajik youth. Authorities also started to realize the importance of the language given the steadily high flow of Tajik labor migrants to Russia.

Husrav Shanbezoda, Dean of the Philology department at the Russian-Tajik Slavonic University in capital Dushanbe, believes that migration will help the Russian language to survive in Tajikistan.

“Authorities are trying to promote bilingual education in Tajik and Russian languages,” Shanbezoda said to the Deutsche Welle.

“Departments of the Russian philology have been opening at the National University and Khorog University. We are preparing specialists to teach Russian as a second language in Tajik schools. Overall, situation with Russian language has improved significantly for the past three years,” he concluded.

Originally posted and written for: Ferghana.ru

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