About Arenal
La Fortuna or its better known name "Arenal" is a town with many
natural wonders. It’s located about four hours
from San Jose. It has an large active volcano, named
Arenal, which spurts lava rocks every few seconds,
which makes this place a star attraction. It’s
also responsible for producing large amounts of
hot springs that people flock to each year. There
are many other beautiful ttractions such as waterfalls,
hikes around the volcano and a lake that you can
circumnavigate with an ATV.
These are just a sampling of the
activities that will keep you interested for a long
time. The local culture in La Fortuna is a mixture
of local Costa Ricans natives and people associated
with the tourism industry.
About the School
Program
The school program uses a combination of immersion
teaching methods centered around the Communicative
Approach with a solid grammar component. Instead
of a traditional grammar program, classes are designed
to provide a fully balanced intensive immersion
experience for students. This means that they incorporate
all aspects of language acquisition: conversation,
grammar, reading, writing, general comprehension
and idiomatic expressions. The teacher’s role
is seen as one of facilitator, where the students
have input into their own learning, thereby making
it more meaningful to their own experience. In addition
to formal textbooks, they use a wide variety of
current materials: newspapers, literature, audiocassettes/CD’s,
videos, advertisements, music, short stories and
more. Classes also incorporate field trips and out-of-class
learning. Thus classes remain interesting as well
as educational!
There is a maximum of four students per class.
This designed so that the students received full
attention from instructors. It also allows an open
forum for discussion on topics such as daily classroom
materials, culture, politics, tourism, and many
more. All the classes are held in Spanish. But administrators
and some of the instructors are fluent in English,
so when a question needs to be answered properly,
it can best be explained. The Universal orientation
of all our Spanish schools is to encourage students
to speak Spanish only. Classes are in session Monday
through Friday and run from 8:00 am to 12:30 pm.
Students are given two 15 minute breaks during this
time.
Host
Families or Student Housing (Cabinas/School Stay)
Host families are different in each
location. In small towns like Arenal, host families
are for the most part, middle class and educated.
In these houses, you will find basic comfort amenities
like a nice TV, computers, modern furnishings and
clean houses.
With that said, most of the families
in Arenal are extremely motivated to help students
learn to communicate and have a desire for students
to come away from their visit with a positive experience. All host families are very friendly and love to
chat when they get a chance.
The school will work closely with
families that best suite the programs needs. If
students decide to not participate in the host family
program there are plenty of hotels in the area to
choose from. However, we highly recommend staying
with a family in order to give oneself many more
opportunities to be fully engaged in the Immersion
process.
Hotels
There are various hotel options in
Arenal.
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