Learn Spanish

Where can I find a good Spanish course?

How about IH Barcelona? (!) In fact, quite a lot of our CELTA trainees stay on after their CELTA course to take a Spanish course as well. Some of them plan it that way, some (we suppose) just fall in love with the place (we mean Barcelona!) and decided a bit on the spur of the moment...

And quite a few take advantage of the fact that we have a Spanish teacher training department that offer "almost free" Spanish lessons (talk to the secretary in the Spanish teacher training department).

Which means, of course, that having done your teaching practice on the CELTA course, you then learn your Spanish on the other side of the fence, as it were!

You can obtain full details of our Spanish courses in Barcelona from the Spanish Department (on C floor) - or from their website.

Is Barcelona a good place to learn Spanish? Don't they speak Catalan there?

It's simply nonsense to suggest that Barcelona is not a good place to learn Spanish. It's certainly true that Catalans speak Spanish with something of an accent but having traveled all over Spain I'd say that in fact it's one of the easiest to understand, their pronunciation being very clear and deliberate. Certainly the Catalans are much easier to understand than people from Madrid or anyone from anywhere in the south of Spain.

You're afraid you'll pick up a Catalan accent? Don't be... If you do, fantastic! Picking up the local accent is a sure sign that you are making real progress in the language.

Should I learn Catalan?

If you're going to stay here long-term, like for ever, I mean, yes, definitely. If you want to feel that you belong, you're going to have to.