Hello! My name is Mohammed. I am a Saudi student, who came to ELP eight months ago as a part of my foundation year to prepare myself academically and personally to apply to and enroll in a university in the United States. When I came to the US one week before classes started, I was so nervous, but this feeling faded away as soon as I started the orientation week; I met many teachers at the beginning of the session party. I felt comfortable talking to them. The teachers were so friendly and very understanding of my situation as a foreign student.
"ELP was/is/will be one of the most important stops that changes my path for the better."
What I love the most about ELP is the Student Center. It is the place that I can meet up with new students and gather between classes. In addition, I love the trips that we take with the ELP. ELP always keeps us busy doing activities and discovering new places in the city when we are not taking academic classes. I really like the staff of the Student Center; they are more like friends to me than staff.
Another thing I really like about ELP is the students. I like that the students are so cooperative. The atmosphere of the classes makes me feel more confident. The way my classmates and me help each other makes me a better English speaker; we speak English together (even if we share the same native language) because we want to improve our English.
As I mentioned earlier, I have been in ELP for 8 months, which means 4 sessions. The ELP helped me on many levels. It helped me to improve my Academic English; it increased my fluency in speaking. In addition, I started to get into reading books because of the classes that require reading books. Moreover, ELP helped me to improve my scores in the standardized tests. Furthermore, I became more confident speaking in public due to presentations I had to do as final projects. Also, ELP gave me the opportunity to be able to join Penn's clubs and organizations, so I joined Penn Outdoor Club and Penn Figure Skating Club. To be honest, in my journey of success, ELP was/is/will be one of the most important stops that changes my path for the better. I am so glad that I am going to spend 10 more months in this great Program!
