Nick Beckett's Page

Often when travellers or students visit countries within Central and South America with the intention of learning Spanish, they will often immerse themselves in the language and local culture by living with a local family whilst taking lessons at a Spanish school. This is what is known as a ‘homestay’. ‘Homestays’ can be very beneficial for students. They give the student the opportunity to interact and communicate with native Spanish speaking people in a completely natural environment. It prov… Continue

In my last blog I wrote about the elements of Spanish grammar that my personal tutor and I went over during the Spanish lessons I took whilst in Antigua, Guatemala. In this blog I want to talk about the conversational lessons that I attended at the same school. During my two weeks at the school I spent Monday to Friday from 9.00am to 12.00pm studying Spanish grammar on a one to one basis with my tutor. The afternoons were devoted to different kinds of conversational lessons. These included talk… Continue

In this blog I will discuss in more detail what the Spanish lessons were like that I attended for two weeks while I was travelling through Antigua, Guatemala. I will also explain in what ways I benefited from the lessons and how they helped me move one step further towards my goal to learn the Spanish language. The school I went to was well established. Apart from Spanish lessons the school also gave students the opportunity to participate in group excursions and they also organised accommodati… Continue

There is no reason why anybody shouldn’t be able to learn Spanish by themselves without having to attend language classes or take private lessons. There are certainly ample learning resources in the form of textbooks or online material that can guide you through the entire learning experience. The question is which method of learning works best for you! In this blog I explain why I decided to attend classes at a Spanish school in Guatemala even though I had previously studied most of the materia… Continue

In this post I want to talk about what happened to me during my early attempts at trying to communicate in Spanish with the native Spanish speaking peoples of Central America. After spending six weeks ploughing through a basic level Spanish text book and learning as much Spanish vocabulary as my memory would permit I thought I was ready to take on the Spanish language for real!! I actually started my trip through the Americas in the U.S. I spent some time in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San D… Continue