The Akilah Institute is currently hosting an eight-week program in intensive English instruction to prepare promising applicants for the final admissions exam.

Akilah students and graduates’ high-level English skills set them apart from their peers. From day one, English proficiency is a major priority in the classroom across all courses and diploma programs.

All Akilah classes are taught in English, so future students need to demonstrate that they have sufficient language skills to follow lectures and complete assignments, exams, and projects in English.

This year, we received thousands of applications from qualified, motivated women wanting to study at Akilah. Out of more than 4,000 applications, 400 women will make the cut to join one of our diploma programs in Information Systems, Business Management & Entrepreneurship, or Hospitality Management. English skills, both written and oral, are a key part of the competitive admissions criteria.

A student presents her answers to the class.

While many applicants scored high marks on their admissions exams, others needed additional support to meet our English requirement. To ensure these applicants have an opportunity to join Akilah, we invited 60 of them to undergo eight weeks of intensive English training at Akilah’s campus in preparation for the final admissions exam.

Constructing Complex Sentences

On a rainy afternoon at our Kigali campus, Jesse Chou, one of Akilah’s English instructors, takes a class of 16 students through the basic grammar rules of sentence construction in English.

“If a sentence is made up of an independent clause and a subordinate clause, it is a complex sentence. Can anyone give me an example of a complex sentence using the examples from page 54?” Jesse asks the classroom full of focused faces.

Determined to improve their English and pass the admissions exam, the students take notes, discuss their answers in groups, and present their examples in front of the whiteboard.

“I can see how I have already improved — especially when it comes to speaking in public and correcting my own mistakes.”

The main objective behind the course is to improve applicants’ essay and sentence structure enough for them to pass the English test in the admissions exam. For eight weeks straight, they will attend daily classes and complete assignments and weekly journals.

Although the timeframe is limited, it’s likely that these students’ English levels will improve so much that they achieve a higher English proficiency than their future classmates, says Jesse in between explaining sentence constructions and encouraging applause for each student after she presents.

Students discuss their work in groups.

Putting Students in Focus

Amatu is one of these students. Two weeks into the course, her English has already improved significantly, she says — largely because of the way the class is taught.

“I can see how I have already improved — especially when it comes to speaking in public and correcting my own mistakes. The teaching style is very different here than any other campus I know. The teachers here put us students in focus — they make sure we understand and take their time to explain it to us in a very good way,” Amatu says. Along with the rest of the group, Amatu will soon have her English skills tested again to monitor her progress midway through the course.

If students use their new knowledge and score well on the English portion of the admissions exam, chances are very high that they will call themselves Akilah students when classes start in July.