Twenty-six high school and college students from Toluca, Mexico, visited the University of North Texas this month as part of a new program for them to learn English and U.S. culture.

DRC/Gary Payne

Maria de los Angeles Barrera, left, Mauricio Martinez, Francisco Colin, Cuauhtemoc Gallegos and Jesus Flores joke around during an intensive English class at the University of North Texas on Tuesday. The students from the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, are spending two weeks learning English and U.S. culture.

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The Linguistic Technical Communi­cation Summer Institute is part of UNT’s growing partnership with the Au­tonomous University of the State of Mexico.

Katie Crowder, institute director, said the program has flowed beautifully but has experienced the earmarks of a pilot program.

“The focus is to not only get these students more familiar with the [English] language and Texas culture, but to build community, culture and camaraderie,” she said.

The students arrived July 7 and will depart today.

As part of the program, students spent six hours a day in class learning English and participated in interviews and other activities to apply the language. Toward the latter part of each week, they would visit different parts of the city to grasp Denton and Texas culture.

UNT graduate students taught the classes and consequently received valuable teaching experience, Crowder said.

Maria de Rosario Martinez-Uribe was the visiting professor who traveled with the group.

“This is certainly much more than we expected,” she said. “Some of them have never even been out of the country.”

As a high school student in the program, Yocelyn Roxel Perez said it could take at least six years to learn English in Mexico.

“We probably use English no more than 30 minutes a day, and now we’ve gone to 17 hours a day using it,” she said.

Located in Toluca, the Mexican university is one of the country’s public universities and offers a high school program, 58 under­graduate programs and 74 graduate degrees.

Fernando Guzman, assistant director of that university’s office at UNT, said the new program is becoming popular.

“We already have 100 people signed up for next year, and many of the students now are very interested in coming to UNT for graduate school,” he said.

Students are split into either intermediate or advanced English classes, and they move forward accordingly.

“Many kids don’t take English as seriously, and I’m glad I’m doing it because I know it will help me in my future career,” Perez said.

ARLINDA ARRIAGA can be reached at 940-566-6897. Her e-mail address is aarriaga@dentonrc.com .