The Spanish
Schools of Antigua Guatemala
By Ken McCormick, ksmccormick@hotmail.com
La Antigua Guatemala was capital of Guatemala and at
one point of all Central America until it was heavily damaged by an earthquake
in 1773. It is about an hour’s drive
from Guatemala City in the Central American highlands, “the land of eternal
Spring.” With its quaint cobblestone
streets, churches dating from the 1500’s, and impressive colonial ruins, it is
a leading tourist attraction, and is described in more detail in all guidebooks
which cover the area.
There are at least twenty-eight language schools in
Antigua. The ones investigated for this
survey are listed below. The listings
as to “best schools,” “best buy,” and so on are strictly the author’s
opinion. What is “best” for one person
will not necessarily be best for another, so opinions will vary. A lot depends on the chemistry between the
teacher and the student, and good chemistry may be found with luck at any
school, but at some schools you’ll need a lot more luck to find it than at
others. The better schools tend to have
more experienced teachers and to provide a more formal program and teaching
materials for language study. Still,
there are some students who will not like their teachers at Christian Spanish
Academy, the most expensive school surveyed, but may like a teacher at
Primavera, the least expensive school surveyed. The student is advised to investigate and form his or her own
opinions.
Physical
features are to be considered, too.
Most of the schools in Antigua center around a garden or a patio. Some, such as Probigua, La Fuente, and
Primavera are mainly indoor schools.
The rainy season lasts from May to October. You’ll have to decide whether you’d be happiest in a garden
during torrential rains or not. During
the rainy season, it is usually clear during the morning hours and rains in the
afternoon. Consider this in deciding on
morning or afternoon classes. Do you
want to have the mornings free for activities, or do you prefer to study in a
garden environment in the morning?
Don’t be afraid to tour a few schools before selecting one you prefer.
Some
schools spread their students out more, and some have tables and chairs piled
everywhere. In the more crowded
conditions, there is a lot of audible chatter that you may or may not find
distracting. Usually, the teacher seems
to be more distracted by it than the student.
For the
beginning student who is not a member of a formal group, having someone in the
school who can explain to them in English what is going on can help things go a
lot more smoothly. Some school
administrators were interviewed who claimed to be able to speak fluent English,
but who were unable to actually demonstrate an ability to do so. The only highly accessible
administrator who the author located who spoke very good conversational English
was at Christian Spanish Academy, although there must certainly be others
somewhere. Having someone who can
explain things to you or handle little emergencies can save you from feeling
constantly bewildered. Decide whether
you need or want this help or not.
College
credit may be arranged for with some difficulty by only a few schools. To receive any credit, a minimum of 60 hours
of instruction is needed. For about
$20, an exam may be arranged for to receive credit through the Forest Service
Institute located in Illinois in the United States. Other schools charge about $85 for an exam that may earn credits
at the Universidad Rural de Guatemala.
One school, Academia de Español Guatemala, offers both graduate and
undergraduate credit through the University of Southern Mississippi, but
considering the snail’s pace at which that bureaucracy moves in processing
applications, the student is advised to arrange for credit far, far in advance
of traveling to Antigua. At the time of
writing, the school of San Jose el Viejo was trying to arrange to offer credit
through a U. S. university. Check with
them as to whether they were successful in doing so or not.
The
reader is advised to read “Choosing a Spanish School in Guatemala” for more
general information on Spanish study at http://www.oocities.org/guatemalanspanishschools
. More detailed information on Latin
American culture and life in Guatemala is available at http://www.oocities.org/chicken_bus
.
All
schools will arrange for students to live in a room at the home of a local
Spanish-speaking family, and to have meals with them six days per week
(families want a break from guests on Sundays at mealtimes, so you’re on your
own for meals on that day). This
arrangement is called a “homestay.” It
makes for the most complete immersion in the foreign language, and will bring
about the most rapid advancement in the use and understanding of the
language. Nonetheless, certain people
may find adapting themselves to live with a foreign family tiresome and
awkward, and may prefer other living arrangements. For them, boarding houses (or “casas de huéspedes” in
Spanish), apartments, or long-term stays in hotels may be in order.
Antigua
is full of hotels that cater to tourists.
They range in price from five dollars per night to two hundred dollars
per night. Guidebooks always mention
several, and I’ll leave this duty to the guidebooks with the cautionary note to
the reader that the guidebooks for the budget traveler such as the “Let’s Go”
and “Lonely Planet” guides tend to write more glowing descriptions of the
accommodations than the accommodations deserve. For the first night in town, I would recommend the Sin Ventura
Hotel, not because it is ideal, but because it is a little better than the ones
talked up in the aforementioned guidebooks, and still, at fifteen to twenty
dollars, depending on season, is cheap enough to be a reasonable
compromise. Moreover, it is easy to
find, being just a half-block off the central plaza on the 5th
Avenida Sur. It has too dark and heavy
a décor for my liking, and it is not at all luxurious, but it is clean and
orderly and quiet, and has none of the flophouse features so often found in the
cheaper hotels listed in the guidebooks.
It will do until you’ve had a chance to look around for a day.
Apartments
are harder to find. Check at INGUAT,
the state tourist agency, on the southeast corner of the Parque Central for
advertised apartments. Also check
bulletin boards at Internet cafés and language schools. Prices will vary according to season. Furnished, if somewhat seedy, apartments are
available from about two hundred, twenty-five dollars per month for one
person. The apartments I’ve seen priced
under two hundred dollars have been pretty grim, and I wouldn’t recommend
them.
Schools
such as Tecún Umán, Cabagüil, De La Fuente, and La Unión can place you in casas
de huéspedes priced usually at sixty or seventy dollars per week, including
six days per week of meals.
Accommodations may have shared baths or private baths, and are far from
luxurious. The meals are very good
value for the money. One thing about
these boarding houses full of students, though, is that the students all sit
around and converse in English, which will not help one learn to speak Spanish.
There is a casa
de huéspedes open to all at the price of sixty to seventy dollars per week
in Villa San Francisco, better known as “the blue house” at the intersection of
5th Calle Oriente and 1st Avenida Sur. Just march straight through the travel/
bicycle rental agency in front and go all the way back to the kitchen to
inquire. There are also a few rooms
with private bath to rent for about ten dollars per day in the same building at
the “Sky Hotel.” Inquire in front
A
rock-bottom price will be found at the casa de huéspedes at the corner
of 4th Avenida Sur and 9th Calle A, Number 24. The price is forty-five dollars per week
with six days of meals. It may be
easier to locate by going to the language school Cabagüil and asking for
Verónica Quiñonez.
Schools
surveyed are listed below. Prices are
listed for four hours per day of instruction, either during morning hours, when
most students elect to study, or during afternoon hours. Actually, this will amount to three and
one-half hours per day of instruction, as all schools take a half-hour break in
every four-hour stretch. Four hours per
day seems to be the most popular, but from two hours per day to eight may be
arranged at most schools. Some schools
may negotiate a slightly lower rate if the student commits to a longer period
of study. Contact information and
details on the individual schools are given in the section on individual
schools below the chart.
NAME OF
SCHOOL (See below for details)
Morning Afternoon Registration
|
Academia Antigueña |
$70 |
$60 |
$50 if making reservations |
|
Academia de
Español Corazon del Cielo Cabagüil |
$70 |
$70 |
|
|
Academia de
Español Sevilla |
$85 |
$70 |
|
|
Academia Don
Pedro de Alvarado |
$80 |
$60 |
|
|
Academia de
Español Primavera |
$75 |
$50 |
|
|
Academia de
Español Guatemala |
$93 |
Varies as to season |
$30 |
|
Centro
Lingüístico De La Fuente |
$75 |
$65 |
|
|
Centro
Lingüístico La Union |
$95 |
$70 |
|
|
Christian
Spanish Academy |
$115 |
$115 |
$50 |
|
Escuela de
Español Probigua |
$90 |
$90 |
Must donate a children’s book to library |
|
Escuela de Español
Tecún Umán |
$90 |
$80 |
|
|
Escuela de
Idiomas San José el Viejo |
$75 |
$75 |
|
|
Proyecto
Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín |
$80 |
|
Must pay one week in advance if making reservations |
Best schools: Christian Spanish Academy, Francisco
Marroquín, San José el Viejo
Best buy overall:
San José el Viejo
School with best teacher author has had out of 18
teachers: Tecún Umán
Will
arrange for college credit: Academia de Español Guatemala, Don Pedro de
Alvarado, De La Fuente, La Unión, Primavera, Tecún Umán
Largest schools: Christian Spanish Academy, Francisco
Marroquín, La Unión
Smallest school: Don Pedro de Alvarado
Best separation of students and distraction control: Academia Antigueña de Español, Francisco
Marroquín
Second best separation of students and distraction control: De La Fuente, San José el Viejo, Sevilla
Least separation of students and distraction control: Cabaguil, La Unión, Probigua
English spoken by accessible member of administrative
staff: Christian
Spanish Academy, Tecun Uman, De La Fuente
Most beautiful school: San José el Viejo
Best furniture: Primavera
Best mascot: Don Pedro de Alvarado*
Funkiest layout and wildest, most riotous garden: Don Pedro de Alvarado
* The rest
rooms in the new school near the Parque Central are modern and nice. At time of writing, the school there is just
being opened, and it is assumed that they will be kept clean. The ones in the old school are definitely
down-home but not dirty.
* A parrot
General Information:
All instruction is individual – one teacher for one student. The condition of most schools is rather
seedy by North American or European standards.
If the condition is otherwise, this will be noted under the heading for
the individual school. Most schools offer free coffee. Other extras will be mentioned under the
heading of the particular school. Most
schools offer field trips and afternoon tours at an extra charge. Some offer laundry service and one free hour
of Internet access per week. The
afternoon excursions are all offered at the same price by numerous tour
agencies, there are cheap laundries all over town, and there are also dollar-per
hour Internet cafes on every corner, so you might want to consider other
factors more heavily in selecting a school.
Most schools will happily arrange for you to do
volunteer work in an orphanage, old-folks home, or other worthy cause. Most of the volunteers I have spoken with
have said that they felt they were as much a hindrance as a help in their
volunteer work due to their lack of Spanish-speaking ability after only a couple of weeks of Spanish instruction.
All schools will arrange family homestays for students
at a price of $60 to $80 per week.
Other living arrangements offered will be mentioned under the heading of
the individual school. Having a
photocopier on site will save more time than you’d think if there are no
workbooks included in the price and if your teacher has printed exercises for
you to do as homework, but has to run down the street to photocopy them. For complete information, go to
websites. Getting answers to e-mail
inquiries can be frustrating. La Union
has enjoyed explosive growth in the past year or two, and I think a part of the
reason for this is that they answer their e-mail promptly. The web sites and e-mail addresses given
below are those that the schools have represented as being their own, but in
some cases these sites and addresses are more theoretical than tangible.
Academia
Antigueña de Español –
1ª Calle Poniente #10. www.granjaguar.com/antiguena or www.aroundantigua.com/schools/antiguena.htm
E-mail: antiguena@itelgua.com
Small school with 10 certified teachers. An indoor school with no garden or
patio. Bathrooms decent. Separate teaching rooms make for maximum
privacy. Price includes one hour of
free Internet use per week and unlimited use of bicycles. There is a $50 registration fee which
includes meeting the student at the airport in Guatemala City and taking the
student back to the airport. There is
no fee if the student doesn’t make reservations, but just shows up at the front
door. Do not make reservations unless
you have great anxiety bout finding space in a school. Shuttle service salesgirls will practically
tackle you when you arrive at the airport to offer shuttle service to hotel or
address of your choice in Antigua for $10.
Return to airport from Antigua can be found at travel agencies for as
little as $6.
Academia de
Español Corazon del Cielo Cabaguil
– 5ª Calle Poniente #6
No website – relies on sign in high-traffic area near
Parque Central to bring in prospective students.
E-mail: cabaguil@starnet.net.gt
This school has the biggest crowding and noise problem
of all. The noise is not very distracting
unless the noisy teens who live in the same building start to pump up the
volume. For this reason, morning
classes when the teens are in school are recommended. Bathrooms tend to be somewhat Guatemalan style, although they are
cleaned regularly. Some good teachers
from more expensive schools sometimes work here part time. One full-time staffer who is highly
recommended is Veronica.
Academia de
Español Guatemala – 7a
Calle Oriente #15
E-mail aegnow@intelnett.com
The center of the garden/patio around which the school
is arranged contains a swimming pool which students are free to use. This is a fairly large school which is more professionally-run
than usual. Bathrooms are
Guatemalan-style. Will arrange for
graduate or undergraduate credit for Spanish studies through Melissa.Ravencraft@usm.edu at the
University of Southern Mississippi.
Those wishing to arrange to receive credit should contact the university
directly far in advance of traveling to Antigua.
Academia de
Español Sevilla – 1ª
Avenida Sur #8
E-mail español@sevillantigua.com
The offices and part of the school are a half-block
from the main school, which is next door to Café Mi Destino and shares some
facilities with them. The main school
is less crowded, and has concrete booths along the wall for good separation of
student-teacher pairs from one another.
The bathrooms are definitely Guatemalan style. Like its nearby competitor La Unión, Sevilla offers alternative
housing for $65 per week in an international student guest house with a
housekeeper-cook providing 3 meals per day except Sundays. Has a classroom that will accommodate a
group of about 20.
Centro de
Español Don Pedro de Alvarado
– 6ª Avenida Norte #39
www.guacalling.com/donpedroschool/
E-mail: donpedro77@hotmail.com
A small school near La Merced that is reached by
passing through a travel agency. It
consists of a nice bar and chairs and tables under various funky shelters
ranged around an out-of-control garden with a pet parrot. Bathrooms tend toward the Guatemalan
style. Credits may be arranged through
the Forest Service Institute. If a
student pays for two weeks at one time, the price of the first week will be
discounted to $49.
Academia de
Español Primavera – 1ª
Calle Poniente #6-B
E-mail only: elsavab@hotmail.com
Small indoor school ranged around a sort of atrium
full of potted plants beneath a partway-open skylight. Nicer than average furniture (not saying
much), and not overcrowded. Seedy
bathrooms. Will arrange for credit
through Forest Service Institute.
Offers the lowest-priced afternoon classes in town.
Centro Lingüístico
De La Fuente – 1ª
Calle Poniente #27
E-mail: delafuente199@hotmail.com
A school with equal indoor and outdoor areas that may
be used according to preference. Garden
is not as well-kept as others. Has a
classroom in which a group of perhaps 10 may meet. Indoor area can accommodate 20 students in all. Can arrange for credits through the
Universidad Rural de Guatemala. Bathrooms
okay. Can set students up in hostel
housing near school.
E-mail: launion@conexión.com
Now one of the largest schools in town, La Unión is
currently opening a luxurious branch in a palacio near the Parque Central. The old school was overcrowded with
Guatemalan-style bathrooms. Offices are
located in both branches. Has a
classroom that will hold a group of 20 or 30.
Will arrange for credits through either Forest Service Institute or
Universidad Rural de Guatemala. Due to
rapid growth, the school has tended to employ teachers with less experience
than many other schools, although all seem to be competent.
Christian Spanish Academy – 6ª Avenida
Norte #15
E-mail: information@learncsa.com
The most expensive school in town, and thought by many
to be the best. Despite the name, this
school is not in any way a religious school, and is not affiliated with any
church. It was originally conceived as
a Spanish school for missionaries, but this never developed. The name stuck, though. Atheists and members of all religions are
welcome. Can handle a maximum of 90
students. School consists of tables and
chairs on first and second floor arranged around an atrium. Small classrooms also exist for group
meetings, and one large classroom will hold about 35 students. As if the price weren’t high enough, there’s
a $50 registration fee. Price includes
text and workbook. Will help student
find apartment or hotel if a family homestay is not desired. Administrative staff speaks fluent English
and is readily accessible. Bathrooms
decent. Building in nice condition.
Academia de
Español Probigua (Proyecto Bibliotecas Guatemala) - 6ª Avenida Norte No. 41B
E-mail: Probigua@conexión.com.gt
Founded with the goal of establishing libraries, the
school is presently maintaining twenty-two libraries in rural areas, and has
Central America’s first bookmobile, a converted chicken bus which can often be
seen parked in front of the Iglesia La Merced.
This is an important social project, as literacy in Guatemala is only
50%, and schools provide neither texts nor school libraries. Volunteers are sought for the bookmobile and
computer centers of the school. There
is of course a large library for the use of language students. Facilities for instruction mostly indoors with
a small patio area available. By school
policy, all teachers are women. Free
coffee, tea and fresh bread at morning break.
Photocopy machine on site, which is more of a time-saver than you might
think.
Escuela de
Español Tecún Umán –
6ª Calle Poniente No. 34 A
www.tecunuman.centramerica.com or www.escuelatecun.com
E-mail: etecun@centramerica.com
Excellent website recommended for such information as
weather and what to pack. Offers
alternative housing options; see website for details. When first visited, the indoor school was crowded with seedy
bathrooms, but as of the time of writing, was involved in renovations. The renovations will be completed by the
time of publication of this survey. During
renovations, the school rented an old children’s school building near the
mercado. This addition is expected to
remain in use. It has indoor classrooms
ranged around a concrete patio. Desks
can be placed indoors or outdoors.
There is a mini-soccer field on which students and teachers compete each
Friday. College credit can be arranged
for from Universidad Rural de Guatemala.
Photocopy machine on site at the office.
E-mail: spanish@sanjoseelviejo.com
Outstanding location next to the ruin of a colonial
church. Grounds very beautiful with
tile-roof casetas spaced out along the sides to provide excellent privacy
for teacher and student. A
twenty-dollar deposit is paid at the outset for the loan of the textbook/
workbook. School has rooms and
apartments for rent on the grounds priced from $210 per week to $420 per
week. These include access to swimming
pool and tennis court. This is one
school for which reservations are recommended, for unlike some schools which
will gladly set up a card table on the sidewalk to accommodate more students,
San José will take no more than 35 students at a time, and may fill up
especially quickly during busier seasons such as June, July, and August and
January.
Proyecto
Linguístico Francisco Marroquín
– 7ª Calle Poniente # 31
E-mail: plfm@infovia.com.gt
The first and largest language school in Antigua,
capable of handling 120 students.
Located next to the ruins of a cloister, the outdoor location is
interesting. Small booths are provided for
each student and teacher. Will help locate apartment or hotel if homestay is
not desired. Offices are in a different
location from school, which is near the Templo La Merced. A large classroom for group meetings is
available in the office complex. Director
speaks fluent English, but is not generally available.
For More Information:
The
reader is advised to read “Choosing a Spanish School in Guatemala” for more
general information on Spanish study at http://www.oocities.org/guatemalanspanishschools
. More detailed information on Latin
American culture and life in Guatemala is available at http://www.oocities.org/chicken_bus
.