Gia Lai promotes ethnic minority languages

J'rai youth perform gongs at a traditional festival. (Photo: VNA)

The Central Highlands province of Gia Lai has continuously expanded the teaching and learning of Bahnar and Jrai ethnic languages in schools in a bid to preserve the traditional languages.

In the 2014-2015 school year, as many as 349 classes have been organised across 89 local primary schools targeting nearly 8,000 ethnic minority pupils, 6,800 of which are Jrai and 1,155 are Bahnar.

A number of training courses have been conducted annually to enhance the capacity of ethnic minority teaching staff, including 321 teachers from Ayunpa and A Khe towns and Pleiku city in 2014.

In the first half of this year, another 239 teaching and managerial staff attended training programmes and received certificates from the province’s Teacher Training College.

Hundreds of local officials also joined Jrai and Bahnar language classes. Some of them also teach the languages at local primary schools.

Local teachers and intellectuals participated in the development and edition of the curricula.

The locality has also invested some 1.25 billion VND (57,300 USD) in reprinting ethnic language textbooks for the 2015-2016 school year.

Deputy Director of the provincial Department of Education and Training Huynh Minh Thuan highlighted the lack of Jrai and Bahnar language teachers in the locality.

He also called for different human resources for teaching the languages in remote and mountainous areas.-VNA