Reviews for Advanced Conversation

The classes are small with students who want to improve. The teacher facilitates the class pleasantly, making necessary corrections gently and is open and has a nice sense of humor.

I really enjoyed this class. Rolando kept the conversation fun and flowing. Usually was a small group which made for a good amount of talking per person.

Levels are all over the place. I’m guessing that students should probably take an oral proficiency test before being allowed to take an advance conversation course. I stopped going after the third class as it was not helpful at all to me.

I enjoyed the class. We always had interesting conversation. It would be cool if Berges embedded grammar lessons into the conversation curriculum. Just mini lessons about topics that aren't part of the five grammar classes.

I really enjoyed this course! I thought Rolando was a very patient instructor and a good fit for an advanced conversation class. I also feel that my conversation skills improved over the course of the class and I enjoyed getting to know the other students. I would have liked a bit more variety in the structure of class (it got a bit repetitive after a while) but that's a small thing - overall, it was great and I will definitely be taking it again.

Very friendly and engaged instructor, ideal size of class and good dynamics within the group so that we always had interesting discussions and topics to talk about. Maybe the level and speed of the conversation was a little too low for me but the course was still worth it.

Maybe I just got lucky, but there was a great group dynamic, and we opened up quite a bit in each others' company. We touched on some remarkably profound conversation topics for the level of Spanish we knew. If anyone switched to English, the others nudged her back to Spanish. In no small part, of course, as always, this was thanks to Alejandro, who was good at facilitating and prompting people to talk about engaging topics. I'm a little sorry I didn't get my classmates contacts so we could stay in touch. It's rare that I am in such a diverse group, in terms of professional and personal backgrounds.

The Advanced Conversation class, at Berges Institute, was a great resource and opportunity to refine my Spanish speaking skills. Jennifer Guedes was an excellent professor throughout the course, pushing us to enhance our speaking abilities. She created a comfortable environment that is essential to grow as a language learning.

very friendly instructor and group, laid back atmosphere, fun discussions

I definitely enjoyed this course, overall! Nelson clearly enjoys teaching and the members of our class clicked in a great way. He asks interesting questions and conversation flowed relatively easily throughout our time together. I also appreciated that Nelson did not try to enunciate so clearly all the time. It felt more organic and real and forced me to use context clues to figure out what he was saying. All of that said, I think there were areas where several of us struggled (the typical ones - por/para, ser/estar, subjunctive) and it would have been helpful to take a step back sometimes for a quick grammar lesson (like 2-5 minutes). Nelson would pose hypothetical questions to try to get us to use certain tenses, which made for fun and interesting conversation, but often did not accomplish the objective. I think it would be valuable to have more strategies to intentionally incorporate practice with certain grammar stumbling-blocks more often because I did not feel I improved in these areas throughout the course.

We had interesting conversation. Nelson made sure to introduce the use of various tenses. He also corrected our vocabulary and conjugations The class itself had a good group of students.

I definitely get a lot of practice understanding and speaking Spanish with advanced vocabulary, conjugations and grammar. One suggestion I would make is for the HW to be more functional and engaging, and by giving so many choices of topics to read for discussion it is too much and often not practical for the teacher to go over in class. I also think it would be better if the individual teacher assigned HW for each class. Perhaps just watching one episode of a TV show in Spanish on Netflix.

This was a great class. The instructor was very skilled, helpful, and engaging. I liked the format of open dialogue on a number of different topics. The book was not the most exciting in the world, but it helped me learn a lot of new vocabulary. On the downside, I think Berges may need a better system for assigning people to their correct level for conversation. I also think that in conversation classes, instructors could do more to help folks with pronunciation, rather than only vocabulary and grammar.

I feel like I learned a lot and became more confident in my ability to speak spanish.

I love this course. The conversation was great. Nicholas always kept the dialogue moving. The other students were awesome

Nicholas is a great teacher. I generally enjoyed the course and will be signing up again; however, there were several people in the class that were not advanced Spanish speakers, which was frustrating. The benefit of the class for me was not the attendance but the preparation. My other complaint was the lack of structure in the course and the homework assignments were not reviewed during the class period, so there was no real reason to do them.

The advanced conversation course was better than expected. Nelson kept us on our toes and engaged.

I have one major complaint. I was interviewed and I signed up for a class in advanced Spanish. What I got wasn't remotely advanced. There were only 5 students in the class. Two of them I would describe as having beginning level Spanish, one as having intermediate level Spanish, and only one other students as have advanced Spanish. I have no complaints about the teacher, Nelson Naverete, who did a heroic job of keeping us together. In short, I barely improved my Spanish at all because the other students held me back.