Spanish classes in Carlsbad

I took Spanish in high school and college. It was the perfect refresher course for me.

This course fell far below my expectations. Honestly, I'm surprised you even sent an eval form given when I discontinued coming to the course I sent a detailed email as to why, requested a conversation about continuing with private lessons instead, and never received any response from the school or instructor. First, the pedagogical methods used, from my understanding, are outdated in terms of approaches for adult language learners. My class, and I'm not kidding, consisted of a full hour of laboriously going over sentences assigned for homework, which few of the participants did, so we had to sit there and wait for the students to figure out the homework on the spot. Then maybe 30 minutes of actual instruction of new material. Moreover, we are ADULT LEARNERS. Calling on students without their consent, just calling out someone's name to give an answer, is insulting and does not take into account different learning styles or anxiety someone may feel speaking in front of others. It also means the entire class has to sit there while another *adult* who does not know the answer has to sit and sweat it out in front of the group. Not acceptable. I attended this class with my husband who is already fluent in three languages. We couldn't believe how not engaging it was. I can't believe we paid to primarily review homework sentences every week. One day we were sitting doing our homework together and my husband started yelling, "I'm not going to write a paragraph in the present tense using this vocabulary. I'm not doing it!" And we just decided to never go back. At that point, I looked for the instructors contact info but couldn't find it. So I wrote a very nice email to the school stating the class wasn't a good fit for us, but were potentially interested in private instruction with the teacher and never heard back. So that was that.

This was a great course! I'd recommend Berges to anyone studying Spanish for the first time.

At age 70, I decided to try again to learn Spanish. I chose the Beginner's level because I needed the review and did not want to be "left behind in the dust" by younger students surging ahead with their quicker brains! I appreciated the way the course was structured. Common topics of "getting to know you" conversation were introduced early in the course. I felt I could quickly make sense of basic Spanish grammar which helped my ability to communicate more easily what I wanted to say. Many "holes" in my understanding left over from former beginning classes were filled in nicely. I feel much more confident about trying to communicate in Spanish (at least at a rudimentary level!)

This course is fantastic if you are looking for basically one on one tutoring. The instructor goes through each section basically just following all the homework provided and every single line of the textbook. She may use some graphics, but I personally need out of the textbook references and making conversations that are easy to remember. The instructor did the basic, but I’m looking for an instructor that really brings you in and tries to educate you on why it’s pronounced that way or helps you to memorize the topics. I forget things easily and always made shortcuts so I could remember, but as Professors do in a class of two people - I would be put on the spot and blank. I was hoping to find a learning community, but I think the most I found here was a resources textbook and someone to read it to me.

I learned a lot during the class times, but the book and the online platform made it a bit difficult to learn. I had to find lots of outside resources to learn the content so I could participate in class.