Spanish Immersion in Spain and Costa Rica

What motivates you to go abroad to polish your Spanish skills? To help you travel the Americas with ease? To learn the language straight from its source? To broaden your future career options? 

Spain and Costa Rica are both popular travel destinations for students and vacationers alike; they both offer incredible opportunities to practice the language with locals while soaking up rich local customs, sampling traditional cuisine, and picking up on particularities to the regional dialects spoken nowhere else in the world. 

Spain

Learning Spanish in Spain

The GLA Experiential Language Curriculum™ combines language learning in the classroom with immersion through community service, excursions and cultural activities.

On our Spain: Spanish Service in Action™ program, you will experience first-hand how language is shaped by place and culture. Unlike learning and practicing Spanish in the United States, Mexico or throughout Central and South America, Spain is the Spanish language homeland, and the language has been spoken here since long before Europeans first arrived across the Atlantic.

For teens interested in Europe and looking to travel throughout the European continent someday, learning Spanish in Spain can be a real asset (one that will also benefit you back home if you're more fluent in the language upon returning to the States, even if they don't use the Vosotros conjugations here!).

Building Bridges with Others through Language

As part of your community service proejct in Spain, you'll lend a hand to Spanish children so they develop better opportunities in the future by improving their English language skills. In Toledo, volunteer at a school running a summer English camp with kids. Help them to learn English and develop other key skills that will prepare them for the future.

See how being bilingual in English and Spanish opens up new doors of opportunity that would otherwise be unavailable, especially in Europe, where English is widely spoken for business, government and tourism purposes.

Culture + Language = Immersion

Declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, Toledo, Spain has been named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, known for its impressive heritage found through local customs and monuments. It is a playground for learning. Toldeo is often called "the city of three cultures" as Judaism, Islam and Christianity are all rooted in this city. While in Toledo, you'll see how even with a shared language, different customs and backgrounds can thrive independently and interdependently.

The legend of Don Quixote de la Mancha, whose famous route ran through the city of Toledo, will also give you an insight into how written Spanish has affected real life in the region. While on our 21-day Flagship program, you'll go on an authentic "Street Life Tour" in Barcelona while practicing your Spanish with friendly locals along the way (though you'll also no doubt hear the local Catalan language being spoken as well, a treat unique to this part of the world).

Costa Rica

Learning Spanish in Costa Rica

Once you start interacting with the locals in Costa Rica, you’ll definitely see the difference. Speaking with a native Costa Rican is one of the best ways to find the rhythm that flows in Latin American Spanish. Ticos (Costa ) have regional slang, unique idioms, and put their own spin on the Spanish language. 

Building Bridges with Others through Language

On GLA’s Spanish Service Adventure, each time you go out to a service site or have a home visit with a local family, you’ll get a chance to enhance your language skills and push yourself to communicate. It’s not all about grammar! Just putting yourself out there with friendly locals that want to help you learn will boost your confidence and allow you to pick up Spanish faster than you thought possible.

Once in Costa Rica, you’ll work with green building initiatives that will let you see first-hand the harm plastic waste can do to the environment and then give you the opportunity to do something about it! You’ll also get the chance to partner with small, local coffee farms that care about environmental protection. You’ll be able to help with the transition these farms are making from conventional to organic coffee production.

Adventure Time!

If you’ve ever wanted to zipline though the canopy of a cloud forest, learn to surf on a pristine beach, or raft down the Pacuare River’s world-class whitewater, this program has everything to get your heart pumping! While speaking Spanish with instructors and guides, you’ll be able to go on thrilling excursions and explore the vast amount of experiences Costa Rica has to offer. You’ll even get a chance to hike into the famous Manuel Antonio National Park!

Costa Rica is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, with lush cloud forests and incredible beaches being only a small part of the draw. Costa Rica is teeming with wildlife, having more than 5% of the world’s biodiversity. The country is also extremely passionate about environmental conservation, with approximately 25% of the country containing protected forests and reserves.