Discover Buenos Aires

We had our first Spanish lesson on Tuesday, and thanks to reading another blog, we found a great teacher, Marco Luccón who runs Hablar en Buenos Aires. He’s 24 and really loves languages and teaching. He has split his apartment in Palermo into a living area and a classroom (complete with whiteboard) and has prepared many of his own materials.  We had originally decided to take two classes per week, but now that we’re realizing how much we actually need to learn, we’re going to see about bumping that up to three classes per week. He charges AR $30/hour for individual lessons and AR $44/hour for group lessons for the two of us. His web site slogan is “Now learning Spanish is fun and easy” and while I’m not so sure about that, so far, the class has been great.

I’d strongly recommend Marco if you’re in the area. We also interviewed a couple of great private tutors who will come to your house, but we decided we needed something to get us out of our apartment. We also considered enrolling in a group class, but we liked Marco’s approach more. If you’re looking for advice on what may be best for you, the BA Expats Forum is a great place to ask for recommendations for schools or tutors.

We also have a copy of Rosetta Stone, which is a great program.  We started to use it before we moved, but did not keep up with it. We’re planning to go back to that as well to learn as much as we can as quickly as possible.

There are also a number of new Web 2.0 sites that promise to help you learn Spanish:

• http://www.mangolanguages.com
• http://spanishpod.com/
• http://www.babbel.com/

We didn’t use these too much, but they may be another good resource for you. We’ll let you know how our lessons progress.