The Pouma Academy is an innovative online language school where we teach English and cultivate our students’ 21st-century life skills like imagination, decision-making, empathy, and critical thinking. “Learn-Enjoy-Grow” are the fundamental concepts of our methodology because we want our students to learn, enjoy every stage of their learning process, and grow personally and professionally through upgrading their 21st-century skills.

Our flagship is the use of video games, digital technologies, and apps as learning tools to fit our adult students’ needs and have the power to enhance students’ language and life skills. We teach the actual language that locals speak in the streets, universities, and companies of New York, Los Angeles, and London. The use of everyday idioms, expressions, and proper pronunciation are integral parts of every lesson we design, and here is when gaming comes into play.

Commercial video games are ideal for incidental learning, making students learn without realizing it. They practice their decision-making skills, critical thinking, and imagination when they plan their actions to survive numerous challenges, co-operate with other players, learn to follow the rules, and stay motivated. The more immersed in a game they are, the better they learn. While playing a game, they have fun, are motivated to use native speakers’ language, leave behind inhibitions, and communicate. At The Pouma Academy, we turn their gaming experiences into lively discussions and meaningful writing topics. We dive into our students’ world and create avenues of learning through gaming. They either have the role of the spectator when we show them, in real-time, a few minutes of a new game, or they work on activities inspired by video games they already know.

Experience comes first in language learning; this is a core value at The Pouma Academy because the most fluent speakers have learned a foreign language through songs, movies, and video games. We design classes according to their interests, personality traits, lifestyle, and learning goals for students who are familiar with gaming or not. Strong verbal communication skills and proper pronunciation are what our adult students need the most. We choose topics on current affairs that concern our students to help them cultivate their 21st-century skills. We trigger their imagination by designing exercises on multiple platforms like Padlet, Edmodo, Google Classroom. Watching TV News and YouTube videos listening to radio stations becomes part of their daily routine once we firmly believe that language is learned through experience. We read newspapers or blog posts and discuss them to draw parallels between the text and their lives.

At The Pouma Academy, we learn the language while exploring the world. We design language classes that appeal to their head and heart; this is meaningful learning. The Pouma Academy, spelled differently, introduces a radically different learning world that motivates the hesitant “Pouma” we have inside us that wants to take action but needs an extra push to run wildly after any personal goals. We are here to offer this boost.