I recently had the privilege of working as an ESL teacher for the WNMU Language Institute’s Summer 2016 Intensive Reading and Writing course. One of the very first assignments that I gave the nine students that arrived from Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez was a short personal narrative, written in English. I promised that the best one would be published in The Mustang. The winner was Ms. Valeria Martinez Loya, a 22-year old Engineering Student. This is her story.
My name is Valeria, I am 22 years old. I was born in Ciudad Juarez. Currently, I am an undergraduate student from the Industrial and Systems Engineering program at the UACJ. I consider myself to be a friendly, shy, sensitive and kind person who likes meeting new people and visiting new places. Academically, I am a dedicated and hardworking student.
My hobbies are listening to music, riding motorcycles, going to the movies, and reading. Also, I like going to concerts with my friends. When I was younger, my favorite band used to be a rock band called System Of A Down, but now I enjoy heavy metal, rock and pop music. My favorite colors are black, pink and white. I am a person who likes learning new things, such as new languages. One of my goals in life is to speak at least three different languages correctly. Last year, I started to learn French. But l have been working hard for three years in order to improve my English skills. Every day I try to do my best in order to achieve all of my goals.
My family and I live together and I like to spend time with them. For example, on vacations, we usually visit our family that live outside the city. My family is made up of my mother, my father, my sister and my dog. My mother is a housewife and she likes gambling at casinos. My father is retired and he spends his free time watching movies. My sister is older than I am and works all day and enjoys going to the gym. My pet is a black dog named Rocko. I don’t know what the breed of my dog is because I adopted him, but I do know that I love him. They are my family and we live together in a comfortable house in Ciudad Juarez.
Ciudad Juarez is a beautiful city located north of Mexico. I like this city because there are many things to do. This city has many places where we can have fun, such as stores, green areas, restaurants, etc. The prettiest mall in the city is called Misiones, I like go there to watch movies. In addition, there are beautiful parks such as Parque Central and Chamizal.
Chamizal is close to one of the campuses of my alma mater, Universidad Autónoma de of Ciudad Juarez. This university has four campuses but I studied at IIT. At this moment, I already finished my career, so I’ve requested a scholarship for a master’s degree and got it. In August, I will start to study for my master. I am still working on projects such as writing academic articles in order to send them for publication in important journals, which are written in English. That is the reason why I applied to study at WNMU: to improve my English skills. It supports my professional development because it is well known that the practice reduces obstacles of communication and learning.
Being at WNMU is a big opportunity to increase my knowledge of English. Since English is a worldwide language, having a good background is an opportunity to grow in both fields- personal and professional. Therefore, I hope this course provides me with the necessary tools to improve my English reading, speaking, listening and comprehension.
Valeria recently completed the WNMU Language Institutes Intensive English course last Friday.
