The standard program can be oriented to your specific needs and goals for learning Spanish. Our different types of Spanish courses, which include conversational groups for non-beginner students up to bilingual students.

The standard program has 10 levels based on an International Scale: Beginner, Beginner + and Upper Beginner Intermediate, Intermediate + and Upper Intermediate Advanced, Advanced + and Upper Advanced Bilingual (or almost).

Each level (for instance Beginner) has 32 hours distributed normally across 16 two-hour classes, about four months duration. Normally, a total beginner in a standard course of a two-hour class per week will need about a year and a half to reach the Intermediate + level, at which time he or she will be able to manage without problems in a Spanish-speaking country. It needs to be noted that to reach this goal the student needs to follow the whole program, which includes not only the Spanish lessons but also the homework.

Please remember that we are absolutely flexible about the duration of classes (one, one and a half, two, three, or four hours) and the number of sessions you want per week -- whatever fits your needs.

MORE ABOUT PROFICIENCY

The International Scale is used by many schools to determine the level of fluency in one language and ranges from 0 (beginner) to 5 (bilingual). Level 3 (our Intermediate + level) is a good goal for most people. At that level the student will be able to manage without problems in a Spanish-speaking country.

Most students assume a regular track, spreading out the program over a year and a half (two hours each week for 72 weeks, approximately 144 hours each year and a half). In this case, if they started as total beginners, their level of Spanish should be equivalent to level 3 on the International Scale a year and a half later. Generally, if you have a shorter time frame in which to learn Spanish, you will need more total hours to reach the same level.

For instance, a member of the military who must learn Spanish to work in Madrid (perhaps at NATO) may spend 600 hours and six months (five hours each day) to reach level 3.

Of course, if you want to increase your proficiency beyond level 3, you will simply need more time.