At the heart of all our programmes and courses is the passion our teachers have for educating. Our teachers are qualified, friendly and enthusiastic individuals who continuously develop study plans specifically for the needs and interests of their students.
We aim for a lot in our classes because we believe that learning a language is much more than just studying grammar or remembering new words. Learning a new language comes in many different ways and has many different faces. Below you can find our eight main aims of what we want to achieve in our high quality and dynamic classes. We believe that these are the main points that will make you learn Spanish as best as you can whilst you are with us and, no less importantly, to make sure that you feel happy and motivated about your learning.
Our classes aim to:
As much as we would like, unfortunately we cannot learn a language by taking in a set of rules and then expecting to be able to speak the language. We need enough opportunities in class to practice, correct and improve our language in order to make us remember the language and let it come out naturally. This is exactly what we do in class: giving you ample opportunities to practice and perfect your language usage.
Being actively involved in class we know further enhances your motivation and creates more effective learning opportunities than having to sit and listen for hours without participating at all. We therefore make our classes interactive and always ask for active involvement to make you progress even more and make your language journey more interesting
We want you to feel positive about your learning experience and passionate about the Spanish language. This can only be achieved if we make our classes interesting with stimulating topics and activities. We don’t want you to passively read a text and answer questions about them. We give you interesting topics to read about, encourage you to reflect on them, discuss what you think, express ideas and counter arguments… This needn’t be done whilst sitting down for 4 hours. It can be done through communicative games, student independence and through dynamic interaction in the classroom.
Speaking a language can be a very daunting and scary concept and without feeling confident about your language, can seem an almost impossible goal to achieve. We, from our own personal and professional experience, know how important it is to have the confidence to use the language you know and all our classes are focused around making you feel good about using what you know. Whether you are a beginner or an advanced student, building up your confidence to express yourself will always be one of our top aims.
You don’t have to be a fluent speaker of Spanish in order to engage in Spanish conversations. Speaking a language is more than remembering all the words you have learned. It is also knowing how to deal with a situation in which you don’t have all the language needed, which will certainly happen to you at times. Our classes provide you with specific language activities that our teachers have successfully used over the past couple of years to provide you with the tools to be able to always get your message across.
Nothing is more de-motivating when learning a language than the feeling you are not progressing or that you are never going to achieve your goals or objectives. We believe that regular self-evaluation in terms of your progress and against realistic objectives is necessary to keep you feeling happy with your learning and motivated to go for the next step each time.
A lot of our learning takes place outside the classroom by building upon what we have learned in class, but it is often difficult to identify, or make the most of, the learning opportunities we can find or create to engrain the language more and more into our brains. Through our innovative Spark learning booklet we aim to help you identify and create learning opportunities to enhance and follow up on your learning and set yourself daily goals to achieve and reflect on.
Our classes are energetic because at Spark we all feel enthusiastic and passionate about language education and about your learning. As a language institution, we constantly look for new ways and methods to create a motivational learning environment that keeps everybody engaged. At Spark we all have a passion for language learning and we want to pass this on to you to keep you inspired and motivated about your own personal learning. This doesn’t mean that you won’t find moments when you feel less motivated or discouraged, because all learners do and will, but we believe with our guidance and focus on giving you back your motivation that you will quickly find your way again.
The metodology is very fun! It was really fast, ongoing and challenging and even not reaching the level in my class I never felt lost.