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Ms Stefania Giannini: «Learning in the mother tongue at an early age has a positive impact on future academic achievement»
In the framework of the Translate a Story campaign, the Ministry of Public Education of Uzbekistan, in cooperation with UNESCO and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), translated 130 children books into Uzbek.
Uzbekistan was the first country to complete the translation of over a hundred books in the new phase of the Translate a Story initiative. The books are publicly available to use by schools and families in Uzbekistan.
The official online launch was organized on 14 December 2020 and brought together the representatives from the Ministry of Public Education of Uzbekistan, Norad, and UNESCO.
The launch was the important opportunity to recognize the achievements of Uzbekistan in the cooperation project, as well as to present the newly added reading content in Uzbek.
«Linguistic diversity of resources available is critical to the quality and relevance of education. <…> It is well-established that learning in the mother tongue at an early age has a positive impact on future academic achievement,» .
The situation with school closures heightened the need for reading material accessible at home. «The lockdown even increased reading activities of families in Uzbekistan as 41% of parents reported that they were doing more reading with children now» said Mr Jan Hladík, the Head of the UNESCO Tashkent Office and the UNESCO Representative to Uzbekistan.
H.E. Mr Rustam Karimjonov, the Deputy Minister of Public Education of Uzbekistan, said that translated books would be hosted on the as well as on the Global Digital Library to reach more children.
The translated books are available on the which provides access to free, high-quality, early grade reading resources in languages that children use and understand. The GDL currently offers 5000+ books in 72 languages.
The books are divided into different levels of difficulty. From level one (easy words, word repetition, less than 250 words) to level four (longer, more nuanced stories, more than 1500 words). There is also a «Read Aloud» section which contains long stories recommended to be read aloud for children.
More on the Translate a Story campaign >>
