Low-Cost or Paid Spanish Immersion Programs?

September 30, 2009 7:48 AM

Asking for a friend: Does anyone know of any low-cost or paid Spanish immersion programs?

A very good friend of mine is in the process of learning Spanish with the aim of eventually being able to teach it. She has studied Spanish at the university level and is currently living in Peru teaching English. She speaks and understands enough Spanish to get by quite well in Peru, but she isn’t picking up the advanced grammar or reading comprehension she needs in order to be comfortably fluent. She would like to find an immersion program that would address this.

The complicating factor is that she doesn’t have much money to spend on this, so she needs a program that is relatively inexpensive, allows one to work in lieu of tuition, or (if such a beast exists) is paid.

If there are other ways she might be able to attain fluency she would be open to them at well. Her main goal is to nail down the grammar and reading comprehension so that she can get to a level where she is able to communicate respectably in a Spanish-speaking academic environment.

If it helps at all, friend is a female in her late twenties, from the US, fairly worldly, open to travel (prefers it, in fact) and pretty open-minded.

Any input or ideas of where to look would be much appreciated.

I have seen these previous questions and will send her those as well, but am hoping for some cost-specific suggestions

posted by AV to education (10 comments total)

Get a local boyfriend (or girlfriend, depending on her preference).
posted by BobbyDigital at 8:05 AM on September 30

I don't think she needs immersion programs. The list of vocab you encounter in any given language is way too large to be covered by any program, especially if it's supposed to be cheap.

I recommend reading Spanish literature (Neruda, Cortázar, Allende, Márquez etc.,), (1 book a week) and also watching a lot of Spanish television(4-8 hours per day).

The reason I recommend this is because books and TV give you interesting topics to talk about with other people. Immersion classes are likely to be extremely boring cram sessions. Whereas as with literature and media, you choose what you like. Plus it's something she's going to have to do regularly anyway if she plans on being a teacher. Why not start now?
posted by fairykarma at 8:37 AM on September 30

You say she wants to be able to function in an academic environment - what is her field? Could she find internships abroad through former contacts in university etc? Alternatively, I would recommend just getting a regular job in another country, and taking literature courses and a local university/community college. I would recommend South America over Spain, just because- in major cities at least- Spain has so many English speakers, and I suspect a lot of international business would be conducted in English.
posted by fermezporte at 8:44 AM on September 30

I don't understand this. If she lives in Peru, she is immersed in a Spanish-language environment already, yes?

If she wants to study grammar and improve her reading comprehension, there are many good cheap and free resources to do that without giving up the advantages for spoken fluency she experiences by living in a Spanish-speaking country. Marcial Prado's Advanced Spanish Grammar: A Self-Teaching Guide has been really helpful to me. Colby College has a great grammar site.
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:06 AM on September 30

If she's living in Peru and she can't learn good spanish, she never will anywhere. Nthing BobbyDigital, she needs to get a spanish speaking (spanglophone?) partner!
posted by conifer at 9:16 AM on September 30

Yeap, get a Peruvian lover!
posted by mixer at 9:35 AM on September 30

Maybe find a school and work as an English teacher in exchange for more advanced Spanish lessons (like what native speakers would take for high school or college).
posted by Jacqueline at 9:36 AM on September 30

On one of our trips to Central America, we were told that Antigua in Guatemala was a reasonably priced destination for Spanish-language immersion courses. Not sure how practical it would be for her to go there.
posted by JaredSeth at 9:46 AM on September 30

I would add that when I was in China (specifically for an immersion program) what helped me the most was that I was always talking to people whenever I got the chance. I would learn a certain conversational structure or a bunch of vocabulary for a specific subject at classes in the morning then I would go out in the afternoon and try to work it into my repertoire. As a result I sometimes had lunch consisting of a wide variety of menu items (eg, I would like to eat eggs, pears, apples, peaches, beef, and noodles please), got a haircut ("I have brown hair, how much would it cost for you to cut my hair? I would like my hair very short, please do not cut my ears"), and got a girlfriend.

I would like to be able to assume that anyone living abroad interacts with the locals regularly, but my time working China (after the immersion program) with other foreigners showed me that there are a lot of people who largely ignore the inhabitants of their adopted city. The best, and coincidentally cheapest way to pick up a language quickly and efficiently is to use it all the time, and there is no better way to do that then by interacting with the locals a lot.
posted by BobbyDigital at 11:30 AM on September 30

Re: getting a Spanish-speaking boyfriend, she has actually done that (not necessarily to improve her language skills) and communicates with him well. My understanding of what she's looking to do is to take her Spanish to the next level: to be able to, say, write a business letter as well as a native speaker would.

I'm honestly not too sure about why she's looking at immersion programs in particular. The consensus here seems to be that if she's got conversational fluency they wouldn't be of too much use to her, so the ideas for alternatives are quite welcome too.

Thanks for the suggestions so far.
posted by AV at 11:31 AM on September 30