About
Turrialba
The Turrialba school is located about one and a half hours from San Jose.
With a population of about 40,000 it’s a town
that is not to be missed. It’s a relatively
affluent middle-class town by Costa Rican standards and offers plenty of opportunities
for cultural experiences. The town isn’t as
media saturated as many places and is an ideal location
to study Spanish away from the tourist centers.
The people take a simple, positive
approach to living and the town is very tranquil
with plenty of activities from mountain biking,
running, hiking, horseback riding, swimming in almost
Olympic size pools, dancing (salsa, meringue, and
cumbia), cooking, rafting, kayaking, and much more.
It’s an easy environment to engage in the
Immersion process.
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 be clarified. Universal
philosophy for all the Spanish schools is, speak
Spanish only. Classes are generalyy from Monday
thru Friday and start at 8:00 am til 12:30 pm and
break time is two fifteen minutes in between.
Host
Families or Student Housing (Cabinas/School Stay)
Host families are different in each
location. In small towns like Turrialba, 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 Turrialba are extremely motivated to help students
learn to communicate and have a desire for students
to comeway 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
student 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 Immersion process.
Hotels
coming soon |
