Has anyone taken an intensive Spanish course in Antigua Guatemala, and can you recommend a school?

Question

Has anyone taken an intensive Spanish course in Antigua Guatemala, and can you recommend a school?

Answer 1

Dear Dammepepe

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’s 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 “student friendly”, and the ubiquitous “fun factor”.

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.donpedrospanishschool.com   [e-mail]. 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 [e-mail]. Three star schools include Probigua, email [e-mail]; La Union, email [e-mail]; Sevilla, email españ[e-mail]; Proyecto Francisco Marroquin, email [e-mail]; Academia Zamora, email [e-mail]... 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 website.

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 [e-mail], and finally the Academia Zamora (listed above).

http://www.donpedrospanishschool.com  

http://www.guacalling.com/dps/school.htm  

I hope you make a good choice and are happy and successful with your studies!  Didier