The English Skills Program (ESP) is the first well-structured English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in Somalia that equips learners with communicative, functional, social, and academic English and study skills needed to succeed in post-secondary studies and beyond. In addition to its rigorous English skills training, the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course will propel the much-needed essential academic skills for success in higher education: critical thinking, learner autonomy, study skills, time management, and organizational skills as well as information literacy and social justice.

Students will take core courses using the Skillful textbook series by Macmillan. Skillful is a five-level course taking students from foundation to advanced. The core courses are meant to offer students the opportunity to develop language skills by presenting them with ideas from today’s world while building critical thinking skills that are vital for academic success.

As its name suggests, Skillful follows a skills-based approach. What is refreshing, however, is that each unit has been carefully compiled to encourage students to think more laterally about the English language, their studies, and the outside world. 

The students are first exposed to the unit through a more familiar, or global passage with approachable vocabulary to ensure they are composed and confident with their task. The second, and longer text has more details that necessitate the student to think more, requiring them to engage fully with the associated tasks.

The program is comprised of five levels:

• ESP 080 – Foundation
• ESP 090 – Beginner
• ESP 100 – Intermediate
• ESP  101 – Advanced
• ESP 102 – Mastery

All five courses are credit bearing that count towards the student’s program graduation requirements. The unique and customized arrangement for this in-sessional program calls for a unique and creative solution designed especially for SIMAD UNIVERSITY to mitigate the inherent challenges of the program including time constraints. Therefore, unlike most EAP programs that use only textbooks, the program utilizes extensive multimedia resources, digital content and customized supplementary materials that are used alongside course textbooks.