Besides our national language, the government of Rwanda has established a bilingual policy in education as a way of building a tri lingual nation. In view of the necessity for Umutara polytechnic to produce bilingual graduates, all admitted students have to take a language course. The students from English background take French while those from French background do English. The most important area of our program which needs to be more developed is acquisition of four language skills, namely: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. The course aims at intensively training our students to perform competently in the four skills. Therefore, by the end of the course students are able to demonstrate readiness to function linguistically.
Dr. Mugisha Dean: School of Languages,Communication & Media

In view of the necessity for the UP Languages Centre to produce competent students, to train local primary, secondary teachers and members of the general public actively engaged in the world of work, the Language Education Project aims at intensively training the concerned people to perform competently in the four skills, namely: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Target Population/Clients: (1) Primary and secondary teachers; (2) Members of the general public. (e.g. banks, insurance companies, the health sector, private business enterprises, etc)

Aim
The primary aim of an institution established in the local community such as Umutara Polytechnic should be to analyze and understand the community’s needs as well as to devise solutions for the community’s problems.
The language education project should, therefore, mainly aim at developing language skills and methods to support both student-centred learning in schools and an increased awareness of the needs and demands
especially of industry and other economic sectors.

Context and Rationale
In the global context, there is growing need for focusing the learning of language on the specific purposes of the world of work. In the national context the programme would be in line with the national policies of bilingualism and bilingual education.
But this is often undermined by the lack of language courses for specific communicationneeds. the multilingual nature of the present and future Rwandan society, the ability to competently communicate in more than one language – especially French and English – is increasing becoming very crucial not only among students engaged in training but also for adults engaged in various sectors of national development as well as in communication with the outside world. With the spread of modern ICTs (e.g. the Internet and World Wide Web), the ability to communicate in foreign languages is in higher demand.

Unfortunately, most Rwandan adults who are engaged in the world of work have not had the opportunity to attend formal language courses. When it comes to language teaching in primary and secondary schools, there is evidence that most of the teachers need training in language and language teaching so that they may be in a better position to bridge the gap between education at those levels, higher education and the world of work. And, that is why one of the priorities of the language programme will be to train primary and secondary school teachers.

The primary aim of an institution established in a local community such as Umutara Polytechnic should be to analyze and understand the community’s needs as well as to devise solutions for the community’s problems.
Communication is the lifeblood of any organization. Without the free flow of communication, societies cannot survive. It is therefore important that students of Umutara Polytechnic get the required skills of using modern communication tools.
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