These beginning Kazakh lessons will allow students to acquire basic Kazakh language skills so that they can communicate appropriately with Kazakh speakers in a variety of cultural contexts. This series provides students or others who wish to learn the Kazakh language with self-study materials for modern spoken Kazakh. The lessons may also be used as the main text or supplementary material for beginning university level Kazakh courses. Unlike traditional language teaching materials, the audio and video features on this CD-ROM offer native speaker pronunciation and additional paralinguistic information such as facial expressions and gestures. The user of this material is assumed to have no prior knowledge of Kazakh language and culture, and only a basic understanding of formal English grammar.

These Kazakh CD-ROMs consist of twenty lessons. Each lesson has one or more dialogs available in video, audio, and text, as well as an additional reading text. The user can access the material in word segments and sentence segments, and can practice the material with a variety of exercises including dictation, flashcards and multiple choice. The dialogs are designed to respond to a visitor's need to converse with people in Kazakhstan about everyday matters, and to address survival topics such as using public transport, asking directions, etc. Each dialog is devoted to a certain topic. The dialogs follow a connected storyline embedded in natural cultural contexts. Reading texts, which incorporate the information and structures presented in the dialogs, provide basic information about Kazakhstan and Kazakh culture. Footnotes in English provide explanations on the usage of idiomatic expressions, grammar, and cultural notes.

Students are suggested to first listen to the dialogs spoken by native speakers in the video and audio recordings. The reading texts also have audio recordings. Students can listen to whole texts, individual sentences and individual words at any time and as many times as they like. Users also have access to the English translations of words and sentences. Footnotes help users to learn about both the grammatical and cultural aspects of spoken Kazakh.

After learners achieve full comprehension of the text and the grammar they can turn to the exercises to solidify the lesson material. "Flashcards" help to review and memorize vocabulary. "Multiple Choice" and "Cloze" allow learners to test their knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. "Dictation" helps learners to improve their listening and writing skills. "PAX" helps users learn and improve speaking skills by allowing them to compare their own pronunciation to that of a native speaker.

This beginning Kazakh CD-ROM provides a new and highly interesting tool for learner-centered language learning. By using this interactive multimedia learning environment, you will be able to effectively acquire basic Kazakh language skills including listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. We hope you will enjoy this new approach to learning about Kazakh language and culture.