This study analyzes the results of a survey conducted among 76 urban high school students of both genders at a school in Astana, Kazakhstan, to compare patterns of language use among children from classes with Russian and Kazakh language of instruction. The study revealed that Russian continues to dominate most of the spheres of language use and is utilized as the main language of communication by over 50% of students enrolled in Russian classes, as well as the alternate language of communication with peers by around 70% of the Kazakh-speaking youth attending Kazakh classes. The study also revealed that immediate family, including parents and grandparents in particular, play an important role in preserving the use of Kazakh as the main language of communication. Seventy seven percent of students in Kazakh classes use exclusively Kazakh in communication with grandparents. Meanwhile, in bilingual and Russian-speaking families parents no longer push the use of Kazakh by children with only 19% of children using exclusively Kazakh with grandparents. Importantly, the study revealed that children in both groups increasingly rely on the use of Russian and English in communication across various modern media, such as TV and the Internet. The study concludes that the continuing dominance of Russian may create challenges for maintenance of Kazakh during introduction of trilingual education policy and recommends that greater attention should be paid by policy makers to development of Internet content in Kazakh, while ethnic Kazakh parents should maintain a stricter monolingula policy at home to preserve Kazakh.

中文翻译：

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哈萨克斯坦中学生的语言使用

这项研究分析了在哈萨克斯坦阿斯塔纳的一所学校对76名男女城市中学学生进行的一项调查的结果，以比较使用俄语和哈萨克语教学班的儿童中的语言使用方式。该研究表明，俄语仍在大多数语言使用领域中占主导地位，在俄语班中，超过50％的学生将俄语作为主要的交流语言，约70％的学生将其用作与同伴交流的替代语言。讲哈萨克语的年轻人参加哈萨克课程。该研究还表明，直系亲属，尤其是父母和祖父母，在保持哈萨克语作为主要交流语言方面发挥着重要作用。哈萨克课程中有77％的学生仅使用哈萨克语与祖父母沟通。同时，在双语和说俄语的家庭中，父母不再强迫孩子使用哈萨克语，只有19％的孩子与祖父母一起专门使用哈萨克语。重要的是，该研究表明，两组儿童越来越多地依赖俄语和英语在各种现代媒体（例如电视和互联网）之间进行交流。该研究得出的结论是，在实行三语教育政策期间，俄罗斯人继续占主导地位可能对维持哈萨克斯坦构成挑战，并建议决策者应更加注意哈萨克斯坦互联网内容的发展，而哈萨克族裔父母应保持更严格的单语在家中保留哈萨克斯坦的政策。