Spanish Language Courses In Spain

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Has anyone's teen DC done a summer course at a language school in Spain that they can recommend? Looking at spoken, rather than written. Or, indeed,any advice as to the pitfalls ...

I sent DS on a 10 day immersion course in France last year when he was 13 to improve his french speaking. He was CE level for french and I had this lovely vision of him running around playing football and chatting in French to his friends. It cost so much money that my brain has forgotten the exact cost.

I would be surprised if he picked up more than a few new words, although he did learn that french people say alors, voila, and la all the time. I did rather depressingly work out on his return that on a cost per word basis to was about 175 Euros per word, I would see this as a potential pitfall.

The other main pitfall is that even though DS was with mainly French children with only a few non-native speakers, they all know quite a bit of English. Consequently, he didn't get as much out of it as I had hoped.

Still a bit fed up about it TBH, and with hindsight that money would have paid for a lot of one to one French tuition at home.

Friends are having a Spanish au pair for the summer, have you though of that?

Thanks for that, Anne. Your experience doesn't sound terribly encouraging, but I can easily see how what you describe could happen.

I hadn't thought of an au pair, although I'm not sure I like the thought of sharing the house with a stranger, iyswim.

I think this kind of thing can work if your ds has done a lot of preparation and is genuinely prepared to work hard on actually using the target language. So the older the better. And a good language course probably better than just an exchange.

I did a 3 week language course in Spain as a young adult and got a lot out of it. But I had a reasonable foundation in grammar before I went and was obviously very motivated (I was paying!).

Ok few questions.

where in spain is the big one. Spain is highly dialectually differentiated.

EG, mar o meno (correct) ma´meno (common in murcia) ma´m e(adalucian). Phentic spelling and only a small example of the differences

Northern spain uses different more english pronunciation rather than the traditional spanish pronunciation of letters, sound pairs etc.

Which school?

Eg there is one I know of that doesn´t use "qualified" teachers (ok some unqualified people can beat the socks of qualified people and vis versa) BUT they put children up with english familes that speak little or no spanish. NOT helpful for child that is trying to emerse.

Spanish children without exception start learning English from the age of 2 if in nursery and 5 if they start at "primary" school and there english is without expection very good, they also want to practice it during the summer holidays!

I am saying it is a good or bad idea BUT there are a lot of variables to consider.

With young adults these sort of schools etc work very well but don´t expect all spanish / native speakers it will probably be a mix of europeans. It can be a lot of fun then as spanish can be talked for a lot of the day, then there will be french, german, English later on.

hth

You are looking at cursos para extranjeros presumably? The type of school of which there are eleventy billion in the UK for English, yes?

You need to find a school recognised by the Cervantes Institute (Spanish equivalent of British Council) because then the teachers have a teaching-Spanish-as-a-Foreign-Language qualification etc etc.

Ideally you would want a school which would offer a DELE exam at the end of it, (internationally spoken Spanish certification for teens etc) My 11 and 12 yr olds do the lower of these during the school year.

I would go against the grain and say no matter how ineffective the school (and by god there are indeed some crap ones out there) and the fact that at most, you can probably expect only 3-4 hrs tuition a day, the simple fact of being fully immersed in a Spanish cultural environment for 2 or 3 weeks will be life changing.

I'd go for one of the smaller big cities rather than Madrid. I have contacts at a school in Salamanca (where I studied myself years ago when dinosaurs walked the earth) as well as a couple in Madrid itself, and Oviedo in the north.

más o menos, inneedofrain, not mar o meno. Sorry, couldn't help correcting that.

International House? Branches in various cities and they organise accomodation. Not sure about for kids though.

International House do courses for kids as well.

"Spanish children without exception start learning English from the age of 2 if in nursery and 5 if they start at "primary" school and there english is without expection very good, they also want to practice it during the summer holidays!"

Maybe depends where you are? We used to live in the south (and have visited within the last year), and I'd say that speaking more than a few words of English, if that, is very much the exception rather than the rule.

Not only that, but I used to actively avoid people trying to speak to me in English to practice, because I could never understand a word they said, which was rather embarrassing

I think Cory makes a some good points.

DS is quite shy, academically he is very lazy and devotes most of his life to sports. I thought that an immersion course involving sport would be ideal, but with hindsight you don't communicate much when you are running around. This is probably why he didn't get as much out of it as he should have.

I was thinking about it last night and my main aim was for him to enjoy last year and agree to go on a long immersion course (3-4 weeks) this Summer as I knew he would have 3 months off school, but he won't go. That is what I am most fed up about as to me its a lost opportunity.

It is telling that despite the limited increase in his language skills, I would still pay for another course if he would go.

Non-language wise, he did develop a taste for Europop, and discarded most of his clothes as no longer fit for purpose.

Sorry Hard boiled I am a blinking I pod and It keeps correcting my spanish into english and vis versa! Its a pain and is driving me mad!

Its ok If I am typing in one language exclusviely but like today I am moving between 3 and the blinking thing is getting very close to being thrown out of the bedroom window!

yy takver have a 2 and 5 yo in S Spain and no English at either school or nursery.