SAN ANGELO, Texas — Local colleges and universities are providing support and the necessary resources for those on a path to U.S. citizenship. Howard College is offering a class that prepares individuals for their citizenship test.
“We cannot promise someone is going to become a citizen and that is a very lengthy and expensive and complex process…what we want to do and our focus is empowering people and giving them resources, giving them support,” ESL Coordinator, Howard College, Larissa Elliott, said.
Howard College’s path to citizenship classes are free to the public and funded by the Texas Workforce Commission. The class is a two-part series with each part lasting eight weeks.
“So one of the things we do is we ask students to commit to the process which is a baseline test and 40 hours of direct contact in classrooms to study and then what we call a post test to measure their progress and their reading skills or in a tested skill area,” Elliott said.
The Path to Citizenship class touches base on all important components included in the test. Elliott said the first eight weeks are the most intensive on commonly-tested areas.
“We’re increasing people’s English skills as well which is one of the tested areas on the citizenship test and so we’re looking at reading skills writing skills, U.S. history, civics, government economics and we’re not going into a lot of depth in each one of those things but enough that people are able to have the confidence to approach their naturalization process knowing that they know all the pieces,” Elliott said.
The Path to Citizenship classes are intended to be used as an extra resource to prepare for the naturalization process.
For more information, call 325-481-8323 or email ael@howardcollege.edu.
