A Little Bit About Luis

A Little Bit About Luis

Luis is an 18-year-old computer engineering student at the University of South Florida. Originally born in Ninos Heroes, Hidalgo Mexico, Luis, his mother and three sisters immigrated to the United States in 2002. Luis's father lives and works in the United States and was able to establish work and living arrangements for the family. One of Luis's many strengths is his political activism. Luis is an active member of MASA (Mexican American Student Association) and holds a position as secretary. Luis also follows court cases, sometimes driving all the way to Tallahassee to listen in on rulings that may affect immigrants. In his spare time, Luis performs traditional Mexican dance, watches novellas with his family, and reads fiction for fun.

Luis tells us that he did not speak English for four years. He suffers from a fear of reading aloud and did/does everything to avoid any form of choral reading in the classroom.

Bullying has always been a source of conflict in Luis's life. Luis claims that the other students picked on him because he couldn’t speak English. The language barrier prevented him from communicating with his teacher and still causes issues today, even in college. Luis struggles with composition courses at the University of South Florida. His Composition 1 teacher told him again and again that his grammar and word choice were inappropriate. The teacher threatened to fail and made him rewrite papers, but some how he ended up with A’s and B’s. This left him feeling confused and unable to sufficient make progress. Through his many struggles Luis is a role model for many Mexican American students who are new to The University of South Florida and does his best to share his wisdom and experience as an ELL with others.