LANGUAGE LEARNING:
Spanish in Marbella
 Sarah
Spencer, Head of Cactus Language, contextualises her February
Spanish Course in Marbella.
With a plan to live in Spain in the mid-term future and
working in the language travel industry with my linguistically
skilled colleagues, I have always felt behind in my command
of the Spanish language. I therefore try as often as possible
to get to Spain and indulge and immerse myself in a week long
language course.
My sister and her family have now moved to southern Spain
and we still have a dream of sipping wine on her veranda in
the Andalucian summer and chatting to each other fluently
‘en Español’. So I packed my suitcase (with
very warm clothes as it was February with no heating in her
marble-tiled home) and headed out to see her. She lives a
30 minute drive from the school we work with in Marbella so
I hired a Renault Clio (much nicer than my car at home!) and
not only spent the week learning to speak like the Spanish,
but also how to keep up with the traffic like they do!
I had visited the school before so was familiar with the
location so finding the school was excitingly simple and I
soon learned that if you park just a couple of blocks away
there are ample spaces as the locals tend not to like to walk
very far to get to the town centre. The joy of free parking
near the town centre!
So Monday’s arrival written and oral level test left
me thinking I would be spending the whole week just catching
up to where I had left off, but a couple of days later and
with any nerves left behind on the fast and furious N340,
I was nattering away finding creative ways round the words
I didn’t know. Not knowing how to say something really
teaches you the skill to explain things a million different
ways.
In terms of the pitch of the class, I was really very well
placed, exactly at my level and there was a very interesting
mixture of ages and nationalities. The youngest person was
20 from Slovakia and the oldest person was 60 and from Germany,
the rest of the ages were spread out in between with people
from Sweden, South Korea the US and UK.
Frustratingly I often find myself in a class of students
who seem to have the time, money and circumstance to be on
the course for anything from 4 to 16 weeks. So there I am,
in and out in a week much to everyone’s surprise. Having
said that, taking a one week course is a great way to have
an indulgent week of language immersion, give yourself a refresher
and a confidence boost and ok you’re not as likely to
make life-long friends, but you still get ‘un beso’
from the teacher as well as a certificate at the end of the
course. Not to mention the great tapas and the lovely local
wine. If only the language travel industry granted its employees
more than the standard holiday time!
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