...my daughter who has four years of high school spanish is considering attending a language school somewhere in Spain sometime next year. Does anyone who may have gone to a school have any comments or suggestions as to the optimum length of time to spend at a school before one says "i need a break!". My thoughts are that maybe 8 weeks of 20hrs per week would be fine.... She is not looking at DELE or anything fancy at this stage. Her accent and vocab.are not bad but she knows that she needs work on her grammar and so the idea of immersion and more experienced (???) teachers may be helpful. Do the youngsters who go university/college not find 2 to 4 years heavy going?

...any comments would be appreciated.

Is your daughter in college/university right now? If yes, she could choose to study abroad for a semester or a year or one summer through her university or another college's program. If no, then I would think a month or two where she studied in class for several hours a day would be helpful to be really immersed and rather fluent. However, while it's important to learn vocabulary and proper grammar, if she had four years of high school Spanish then she should have a solid foundation upon which to build her skills. She will improve just by talking in Spanish all the time with the locals, reading Spanish newspapers and magazines, and listening to the radio and television in Spanish.

She can earn college credits during the summer if she studies at the University of Salamanca or goes on a university program somewhere in Spain.
http://corintio.usal.es/

...la historiadora...no she is not at college right now but is in her final year of high school. Currently she has no idea of what she wants to career wise and so i have suggested that she head off to a language school in Spain where she would gain experience in the language and have an opportunity to see a bit of the country. Furthermore , she would have 'company' at a school. If we follow through with my suggestion, the next headache will be choosing a city and a school!!!! Last year we made a brief visit to Spain and so she has an idea of what to expect

...nevado...thanks for your input...we will be studying the Salamanca site

You might consider Universidad Internaciónal Menendez Pelayo (UIMP, pronounced 'Wimp') in the beautiful seaside resort city of Santander on Spain's north coast. It's on Avda. de los Castros in Sardinero.

Santander gets very crowded with tourists mid-July (Virgen de Carmen - 16 Jul) to mid-September (día de Cantabria - 15 Sep). That might be a time to not go there.

Pure Castellano is spoken there and it is spoken very fast.

I'm a current college student and I know there are lots of companies in the USA who offer study abroad experiences in Spain. For example, CIEE is one that some students from my university have used to go to Spain. If you go with a company from the USA, chances are the credits will be easy to transfer back to universities here. My friend just organized a study abroad through a company called CEA I believe? Anyway, I know they exist but they're somewhat more expensive. Of course, they take care of everything for you - you just send in the application and they organize everything.

...greetings 00chris...thanks for your input. I have spent a little time at both the CIEE and CEA (Cultural Experiences Abroad) sites. At first look they appear to be more expensive than the normal language schools in Spain but on the other hand one can earn college credits...at least it would appear so at CEA. Is your friend using CEA to go to Spain? I will have to have a closer look to see just what is ( or isn't ) included in the prices!!

...good luck with your blog.