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Has anyone taken an intensive Spanish course in Antigua Guatemala,Costa Rica and can you recommend a school? |
Travel Info Has anyone taken an intensive Spanish course in Antigua Guatemala,Costa Rica and can you recommend a school? Travel Tips Dear Jidon I studied with a private teacher who had been recommended by a friend. This teacher had twenty years of experience, and because the instruction was one-to-one I found that classes could be arranged for our mutual convenience. She was broadminded, so we could converse about many topics without reservation; we spoke about politics, religion, the manner of people鈥檚 lives. When I started with this teacher I already spoke relatively good Spanish. With her help I achieved an even greater fluency and accuracy with the language. In total I stayed in Antigua for six weeks, studying the whole time I was there. While I was in Antigua I looked into the different Spanish schools located there. I found many of them have websites on the internet that are very informative, but these individual sites are naturally biased toward the individual schools. One very good website, www.123teachme.com, is an independent, non-profit listing of language schools located all over the world. Recommendations and comments are made by former students about different schools; each school is rated according to a five star system. Students classify their school according to the criteria described on the site. These criteria include program quality, accommodation, facilities, value for money, whether or not the school is 鈥渟tudent friendly鈥? and the ubiquitous 鈥渇un factor鈥? There are thirty separate schools in Antigua that have been classified by the comments of former students; the only one to have been rated with five stars is Don Pedro de Alvarado Spanish School,antigua, guatemala http://www.donpedrospanishscho... emaildonpedro7703@yahoo.com. It is the only school to have achieved a five star rating, so for the moment, the Don Pedro school seems to be the most accomplished in Antigua according to this website. Don Pedro is the only five star school listed. The best school in the four star category is the Central Linguistico Internatcional, email info@spanishcontac.com. Three star schools include Probigua, email info@probigua.org; La Union, email info@launion.edu.gt; Sevilla, email espa帽ol@sevillantigua.com; Proyecto Francisco Marroquin, email info@langlink.com; Academia Zamora, email info@learnspanish-guatemala.co... I will not list all of them as there are many more on the website. I would not recommend the schools that have only one star because their comments are disastrous! You really need to form your own opinion when you visit the http://www.123teachme.com I also asked the opinion of my teacher about the schools in Antigua; she had worked in several of the schools over many years. In her opinion, the best schools are those which maintain a small group of loyal teachers, twenty teachers at most, in permanent employment. These teachers come to know each other and work together well over a long period of time. A good school will not seek freelance teachers only according to the numbers of students enrolled at any one time. To work in an optimal fashion a good language school will enrol between 15 and 30 students at a given time. If a school is large and tends to have 50 or more students you must be wary; it is very difficult to maintain more than fifty teachers who all have adequate experience to be successful. My own teacher recommends the Don Pedro de Alvarado Spanish School as first choice, followed by the Academia Alameda, email asa@intelgua.com, and finally the Academia Zamora (listed above). http://www.donpedrospanishscho... http://www.guacalling.com/dps/school.htm... I hope you make a good choice and are happy and successful with your studies! Didier Others There are a number of Spanish Schools all around Costa Rica. If you want to be in the Central Valley, San Jose would be your preference. There are schools at the beaches such as Manual Antonio and Tamarindo that people say are very good. Search. I have had one friend go to school in Antigua, Guatamala. She said it was excellent, after being here in Costa Rica for several months, and much cheaper in Guatamala. She continued her studies for several months there. I don't know exact names to give you, perhaps others will..... but when deciding on a country...... cost may help make your decision. I live in Costa Rica hi I麓m now taking spanish here in costa rica and there are some pointers I can give you. I麓m currently in a school named IPEE and it is located in san jose, in the central valley. This is a great location to be if you are interested in experiencing all different kind of things that you normally are looking for when you go to Costa Rica, besides learning spanish, like the jungle, animal spotting, water rafting, beaches, night life, all that stuff! This is because the central valley is located right in the middle (of course!) and you don麓t have to travel that far between all the different invironments in this country. If you go to some of the schools away from the valley you have to travel twice as far to wherever you are going. Also, this school is great and flexible, (that麓s why i picked it), because they arrange my classes just lika i need to, they fix trips to wherever you want and just this weekend, they made me take an extra lesson every day so i could have friday off and got away the whole weekend to this amazing place named "tortulguiro" or something. my schedule here is from 8:00 in the morning to 12:00, i have some lunch near the school and come back at 1:00 until 3:00. this week i left at 4:00 for my friday off. i麓m hosted with a costa rican family, they take good care of me, thay are nice, you know and thay charge an extra $100 for the week, they give me breakfast, dinner and do my loundry once a week. i hope this is useful for you, because before i came here i was kind of ......you know but somebody in the web gave some info like this and i took the trip. sorry my english, i麓m not american. bye contact the Centro Cultural Costaricense Norte-Americano (Costa Rican / North American Cultural Center) Antigua, Guatemala is not in Costa Rica, claro, it's in Guatemala :-) That said, I suggest you consider going to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala instead of Antigua if you are serious about learning Spanish and not just hanging around sipping espressos with other gringos. It'll cost you about $200 / week, including family stay and 3 meals a day. I recommend Casa Xelaju (www.casaxelaju.com). I have traveled extensively in Central America and am a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras. |
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