Spanish classes in Methuen

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 First, the pedagogical methods used, from my understanding, are outdated in terms of approaches for adult language learners.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.

The class was well structured. I enjoyed learning spanish using the book. The book is easy to follow, and the homework questions could really help me memorize everything. I also like that there are a lot of interactions between students and the teacher. We got to practice our pronunciation a lot. I joined the class without any Spanish background, but I really felt I was picking up fast. English is my second language, I never thought I would learn a third language. But I had so much fun....This morning, I passed the beginner's test and I have purchased the level 2 class with the same instructor (Juan Carlos Alvarez). Can't wait to go to the next level.

I had a very good experience with my first Berges Institute course. I liked how the course was organized, the clear topics and focus provided through the pdf textbook and the regular (weekly) class meetings.

It was a very good course.

I think Berges is great. I did not expect that, as I'm fairly skeptical about these things, but it was a really good experience, and the course materials were quite well organized and the quizzes were challenging. I look forward to the second level.

Great course and I learned a ton. A lot to fit into a few months, but the workbook was very helpful.