While my husband, Scott, was volunteering in Guatemala, a representative from Homeschool Spanish Academy visited his team. Through this program, you can set up private lessons via Skype with a native Guatemalan!
The Homeschool Spanish Academy (HSA for short), offers a no-strings attached free trial class. And by no strings, I mean you don't even provide a credit card number. With nothing to lose, we quickly scheduled the free trial class for my son, Lucas (age 9).
We had no idea what to expect from this free class, but we waited anxiously for the class day and time to arrive. I think we logged into Skype a full 30 minutes early and just stared at the computer :)
Soon the call came in, and we were greeted by a lovely Guatemalan woman name Cecelia. She began the class speaking 100% Spanish, which I had warned Lucas might happen, but the look on his face was priceless. Fortunately, my son already knew some basic greetings in Spanish and managed to fumble his way through the first 30 seconds.
Cecelia spent the first 5 minutes of the class carrying on a normal get-to-know-you conversation, asking Lucas various questions about his likes and dislikes, translating to English whenever he did not understand what she said in Spanish. We learned many new words just through that little conversation (I was listening intently off to the side, and taking notes), before going into the scripted lesson plan.
I was immediately impressed with the entire set up, and before the free trial class was half way over, I texted Scott to let him know that all three of us needed to sign up for classes through HSA.
We bought 60 sessions for each of us because the more sessions you by, the lower the cost per class. The price worked out to $5.67/class for Lucas (who's classes were 30 minutes long), and $9.33/class for me and Scott (the adult classes last 60 minutes). If you pair up or share a class (2 adults or 2 kids), the price per student and class is even lower. I chose individual classes, because that would allow us to listen to more Spanish if we listened to each others lessons :)
Today we start week 2 of classes (I've schedule 2 classes a week for each person, but you can schedule them more or less depending on what works for your schedule), and I am confident that by the end of this year, we will have a good grasp of the Spanish language. It helps that all three of us are taking the classes so we can practice with each other everyday.
It's strange to be a student again, especially since I am my son's teacher, but I'm glad my he gets to see that side of me too. Lucas finds it quite amusing to watch me make flash cards and study for myself. Perhaps watching me will inspire him to be more self motivated when it comes to studying on his own? We shall see...
Adios y Que tenga un buen día!
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