STUDENT WRITING: PROPOSAL by ARTURO GARCIA

A SIMPLE PROPOSAL
April 23, 2013.

An ELI Building

UTEP has a program which helps foreign people to learn English. This program is named ELI (English Language Institute).
UTEP is an institution that provides a lot of majors. However, it doesn’t pay much attention to its own ELI. As ELI students, we don’t have a specific building, so they give us classrooms wherever they want. Consequently, we have to walk a lot and in addition, do not have enough time to buy something to eat if we want to do so. We also don’t see the students from other levels. We are isolated from the rest of the Institute. Moreover, if we have to pay for the course or talk to someone in administration, we have to walk to the principal office.

I propose that UTEP have a building where everyone from ELI is together. Furthermore, this building should have a parking lot for teachers and students close by. If we are all in the same building, every activity that the administration would want to do could be done in their own building. An ELI building would help us to meet people from different cultures and would help us to interact with each other. This would also help to enhance our vocabulary and speaking skills.

I realize that for UTEP it is not cost effective to build a special place just for ELI. However, I am not talking about a big and expensive building, just something useful for everyone. UTEP has a lot of buildings, so maybe they could select an area where we (the students of ELI) could take our English classes and have more interaction. For instance, when we have a lunch or an ELI party, we have to move to the dormitories where there is no parking for our cars, and also some of the students don’t even know where that area is.

The ELI academic program is well designed. We practice every day and we take good classes, but I think a different building for each class and sometimes a different building for the same class is not convenient for anyone; including teachers, students and administration staff. We are not in contact and I think this is not a good situation for an international program.