This study was conducted in Sixth Form schools in Huye District in Rwanda. The researchers’ concern was that most secondary school leavers enter university with low proficiency in English, the medium of instruction. The researchers focused on subject teachers because subject-related courses are allotted more hours than English. The study aimed to explore whether subject teachers offered any assistance in boosting students’ English proficiency. The research drew on Language across the Curriculum (LAC) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approaches. LAC stipulates that all teachers are language teachers, that subject teachers and language teachers should work jointly, and that language should be taught across the curriculum. CLIL recommends that content be learnt through a second language and that the subject and the language be taught at the same time. For validity and reliability purposes, the current study made use of both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods. Findings revealed that only some of the subject teachers used strategies that could help promote their students’ English proficiency. Findings also indicated that content and English language teachers did not collaborate and that the students were not proficient in English. In accordance with these findings, recommendations were made.
Employers in Rwanda have been expressing their dissatisfaction with university graduates’ low English proficiency affirming that it hindered their performance at work. Rwanda Development Board (RDB) also noticed that the English proficiency and work readiness skills of university graduates on internship in 2019 left a lot to be desired, which was an impediment to the completion of the internship and to the development of their professional skills. To enhance these graduates’ communication and work readiness skills, the Rwandan Government, through RDB, sent them to a one and half-month employability boot camp at the University of Rwanda. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating factors that hindered these interns’ development of English proficiency and at exploring whether the course helped improve their skills in this language. For the sake of validity and reliability, both qualitative and quantitative research paradigms were applied to collect and analyse the research data. Themes emerging from classroom observations and interviews were analysed inductively and figures used to interpret the trainees’ results in the entry and exit English proficiency tests. Research findings revealed that unfavorable linguistic environment, teachers limited English proficiency, and regular shifts in the medium of instruction were major impediments to the trainees' improvement of English proficiency. Findings also disclosed that the training had helped the majority of participants boost the four language macro modalities, but that more time was required for slow learners. In agreement with the findings, some recommendations were made on how to effectively support Rwandan students’ learning of English.
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan in China and its rapid spread around the globe, people’s life and work styles have changed. Governments have installed and implemented lockdowns, social distancing, and stay home preventive measures that have forced most people to work from their homes. Research units and higher learning institutions were not spared as well. International conferences that were to take place in 2020 were turned into virtual presentations and until recently nothing has changed. To handle the crisis, the University of Rwanda also thought of transforming its work ethos. In this regard a two-phase online workshop was held in January and February 2021 to review two modules produced during a face-to face workshop in October 2021. These were modules on methodologies to help pre-primary, primary and lower secondary school teachers to effectively deliver their subject content through English, the medium of instruction, and promote learners’ proficiency in this language. As this online review was the first virtual workshop experience of the kind for most participants, the researchers decided to investigate the opportunities it offered them and the challenges faced. Theories on online work and of quantitative and qualitative research paradigms were used. The research tools were a questionnaire and observations. Graphs were utilised and emerging themes grouped into typologies for data presentation and analysis. The research findings revealed a number of opportunities and challenges. The findings also showed the respondents’ potential solutions to these challenges. The proposed resolutions were supplemented by the researchers’ recommendations.
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