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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 ASTANA 000446 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR SCA/PPD, SCA/CEN, R, ECA/A/L 
 
E.O. 12958:  N/A 
TAGS: PREL OEXC SCUL KPAO KZ
SUBJECT:  KAZAKHSTAN:  THEY AREN'T READING WHAT WE'RE READING 
 
REF:   (A) DUSHANBE 0225 
  (B) ASTANA 0280 
  (C) TASHKENT 0221 
  (D) ASHGABAT 0303 
 
¶1. (U) Sensitive but unclassified.  Not for public Internet. 
 
¶2. (U) SUMMARY:  Kazakhstan is highly oriented toward the Russian 
language.  Much of its media are available only in Russian and come 
from Russia.  Thus, the vast majority of Kazakhstani citizens get 
their world view from Russia.  English- language programs greatly 
help counteract this imbalance of information.  Competent village 
English teachers are in short supply; as in Tajikistan (ref A), the 
best Kazakhstani teachers leave the profession for better paying 
non-teaching jobs in the cities.  By providing professional 
development opportunities and support for English teachers across 
Kazakhstan, the U.S. government could encourage local teachers to 
stay in education.  Kazakhstan is the size of Western Europe; post 
needs significantly more resources if it wants to influence the 
language in which people are obtaining their information.  END 
SUMMARY. 
 
RUSSIAN LANGUAGE/RUSSIAN PRODUCTIONS 
 
¶3.  (SBU) Access to English-language resources is extremely limited 
in Kazakhstan.  Even in Astana and Almaty, the country's capital and 
its major business and culture center, it is difficult to find 
bookstores that sell English-language books.  Radio stations do not 
play English-language music, television stations do not broadcast 
English-language programs, and movie theaters do not screen American 
movies in the original language.  The vast majority of what 
Kazakhstanis read, watch, and listen to comes from Russia and is in 
the Russian language. For example, RELO (Regional English Language 
Officer) spoke to a local high school English class shortly after 
the 9/11 anniversary last fall.  Almost all the students were 
convinced that, based on a Russian-language, Russian-produced 
Discovery Channel episode, the United States had purposely bombed 
itself on 9/11.  Kazakhstan, along with other countries in the 
region (ref D), is not watching what we're watching.  Both teachers 
and students need greater access to information in English; when 
asked if the students use the Internet, they all raised their hands. 
 When asked if they used the Internet in English, nobody raised a 
hand. 
 
ENGLISH IS THE DOOR TO THE FUTURE 
 
¶4. (SBU) As the Ambassador put it in recent remarks, "President 
Nazarbayev has said repeatedly in public that Kazakhstan has three 
language priorities:  Kazakh as the national language, Russian as 
the lingua franca of the region, and English as the global language 
and language of the future.  Kazakhstan is a country that is 
progressive and developing and internationalizing quickly.  English 
teaching is one of our most cost-effective ways for communicating 
and spreading Western values and standards, because with language 
comes cultural education.  It is not just an academic pursuit.  It's 
the door to the future and to increasingly harmonious relations 
between Kazakhstan and the United States."  Unfortunately, teaching 
English appears to be an unfunded, unplanned Kazakhstani government 
mandate: RELO recently received a fax from the mayor of Karaganda, 
one of Kazakhstan's major cities, asking for 40 native-speaker 
English teachers to be sent immediately. 
 
ENGLISH-LANGUAGE FELLOWS AND SPECIALISTS:  BRINGING AMERICA TO TOWNS 
AND VILLAGES 
 
¶5. (U) There are many colleges and universities across Kazakhstan 
that would be eager to host an American English professor for an 
academic year.  Ten to 15 Fellows spread across Kazakhstan would 
make a huge impact.  This is true for all Central Asian countries 
(refs B, C). Fellows do more than teach English; they bring the best 
of America to remote locales, providing a cultural and linguistic 
window to the outside world.  The Fellows program is an established, 
tested program that works.  Increasing funding levels for the 
English Language Specialist program is another programming option. 
Bringing in teaching experts for two to six weeks to carry out 
 
ASTANA 00000446  002 OF 002 
 
 
teacher-training programs across Kazakhstan would be very useful for 
English teachers in remote, often forgotten towns and villages. 
 
ENGLISH ACCESS MICROSCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM:  ACCESS TO INFORMATION 
 
¶6. (U) The English Access Microscholarship program is extremely 
popular and cost-effective.  Roughly $1000 per person provides 
young, underprivileged Kazakhstani citizens with English training 
and exposure to American culture for two years, creating pockets of 
good will and giving young people access to a wide variety of 
information resources.  Currently, we have one program in the 
southern city of Shymkent and two in the north, in Pavlodar and in 
Pervomayskiy, a village outside Ust-Kamenogorsk.  An additional 
$250,000 for Kazakhstan's English Access Microscholarship programs 
could provide much-needed English training across this vast 
country. 
 
GETTING OUT OF THE CITIES AND INTO THE COUNTRYSIDE 
 
¶7. (U) In Astana, PAS currently hosts a monthly Friday film night, a 
weekly English-language discussion group in the Embassy's 
Information Resource Center, and a monthly outreach program where 
Emboffs speak to high school English classes on a variety of topics. 
 Another weekly English club led by a native speaker is held at 
Astana's EducationUSA center.  The Branch Public Affairs Section in 
Almaty hosts American Crossroads, a bi-weekly English discussion 
club.  At the eight American Corners across Kazakhstan, Peace Corps 
volunteers host English language clubs on a regular basis. 
E-Teacher, a program that offers Kazakhstani English teachers 
American college-level distance learning opportunities, is always 
oversubscribed.  Nevertheless, demand for native English speakers 
far outstrips the supply.  The Embassy has recently received 
requests from four separate universities in Astana alone who would 
all like a native speaker to meet with their students on a weekly 
basis.  In order to meet these needs and get out of the major 
cities, a substantial, sustained increase of funding for all English 
language programs, including an increase in associated monitoring 
costs, is needed to reach out to Kazakhstan's students and teachers. 
 We all need to be reading the same things, or at least have the 
option to do so. 
 
HOAGLAND