SpanishPanama

I give Spanish Panama high marks. I learned a lot, found the teacher friendly and competent. and the environment suitable for learning. The school administration and staff were uniformly friendly, flexible and helpful. Most students take individual lessons (one-on-one) and that may be the way to go. The first day, I was in a class with other students who had little or no exposure to Spanish study. While I can use almost any review, this was not particularly challenging. The second day, we changed to smaller classes and this significantly improved the situation. I asked for and received homework, so I spent about six hours per day exclusively focused on learning Spanish.

During the last few classes, I was significantly challenged with different tenses of verbs and irregular verbs. If I ever learned them 40 years ago, I forgot them almost immediately. The vocabulary and idioms were also more complex.

In contrast to the school in Santiago, Chile (BellaVista) that I studied at least year, SpanishPanama felt less like a school then a place to get Spanish lessons. BellaVista worked hard to facilitate students and faculty meeting each other by holding Monday morning get-togethers for everyone followed up by common breaks. It was  fun to meet students from all over the world and speak in Spanish. Spanish Panama students seemed to drop in for a lesson and had lives apart from studying. The Spanish Panama demographics seemed more focused on retirees and ex-Pats with a tilt toward North Americans.