STANDARD COURSES OF SPANISH

They are courses offered for all levels. Their purpose is to provide the students with the strategies necessary to understand our language and to communicate in it.

They are mainly for people who either study Spanish in their countries or are studying it in the near future (university students, for example).

They consist of four lessons a day (50 minutes a lesson) from Monday to Friday (except feast days):
- Two of these sessions are designed to work on the lexis and grammar contents necessary to develop a certain communicative function in Spanish (e.g. imperative for instructions).

- During the third session those grammar contents will be practised through written communication activities.
- During the fourth session we will go over the same language points, but now through oral communication activities.

These lessons will take place either in the morning or in the afternoon with the following timetable:

In case you´d like to see an example of how these sessions are developed any day click A day in La Plaza de Babel. (En construcción )

Since we try to be efficient above all, special care of placing you in the level most adequate for your knowledge is taken and the Instituto Cervantes's guiding principles followed thoroughly. So, we can offer four levels:

These are their objectives:

Logically these same objectives are the guidelines followed in the elaboration of our level test. Those who'd like to study Spanish in our school must complete it when registering but, of course, we will consider your opinion and try to adapt ourselves to your needs and if, when at the school, you think the level assigned for you is not adequate tell it to our academic director.

Anyway, we advise you to read our chapter Programs. It is a summary of our program designed according to Instituto Cervantes's indications.

It is also very important for you to remember that the starting dates depend on your level:
a) If you are not an absolute beginner, you can start the courses any Monday. Though the program can be already going on, don´t worry. The direction of La Plaza de Babel has worked hard to design a cyclical one which:
1) allows you to work on the main communication and grammatical contents no matter your starting date.
2) to reduce the risks of information voids in your Spanish learning.

The minimum duration of the course is two weeks, but you can stay with us as long as you want to.

However, we recommend that you complete one or several eight-week cycles of our program and to start the courses in one of these dates:

b) If you are an absolute beginner the starting dates are fixed and the duration of the course is three months. So, the 2001-2002 calendar is:

After these three months, and if you want to go on studying Spanish with us, you can join the Intermediate Level group.

Just before leaving La Plaza de Babel, you will receive a diploma specifying how long you have been studying Spanish and the level you have completed.