At Universidad Veritas, the language program here for study abroad students is an intensive language course. We are in class for 3 and a half hours a day, five days a week, from 8am to noon, with a half hour break at 10. We take a different course each month, and for Grand Valley, each course transferred as 5 credits each. Before I came to Costa Rica, I took a written exam (multiple choice, timed) and an oral interview over Skype with a Universidad Veritas professor. Some students didn't do their oral interview until after they arrived in Costa Rica. All of the course sizes are small, with a maximum of 10 students per class (this only applies to the intensive language courses, although the elective courses are small as well. I haven't found an elective course with more than 15 or 20 students; my elective has 11, but I'll talk more about electives in a later post). The professors are really nice, know the material, and know how to teach foreign students.
My course for the month of January was Advanced 1. This course concentrated on the various uses of the subjunctive tense as well as the conditional. It was a good review course for me, especially since the subjunctive is hard for me since it does not exist in English. It is used when you are in doubt or uncertain about what you are saying. Our professor used her own book, which was well made and a good guide with our lessons. We learned about the culture of Costa Rica, Columbia, Panama, and Peru as well as some of their landmarks and phrases that are only used in those countries. We read three stories throughout this course and learned over 80 new vocabulary words, 20 each week. My professor didn't assign a lot of homework, which was nice.
My favorite thing about this class was that the first week on Friday, we saw a movie called, "Gestacion" which was a historically based movie in Costa Rica where a girl, about 16 years old, had a child with her 17 year old boyfriend, Teo. They only had sex once, but that was all it took. The story followed her struggles with her relationship with Teo and her mother as well as his relationship with his mother. The focal point of the story, however, was her relationship with her private, Catholic, school. The school allowed her to continue attending while she was pregnant, but she could not wear the uniform, could not attend class with her classmates (private tutoring), could not eat lunch with them or go out to recess with them. In the end, the lawmakers of Costa Rica decided that she could not be discriminated against due to her pregnancy. It was a very interesting movie that I would recommend watching.
The second week Friday we had our midterms and the third week Friday we went to the Children's Museum in San Jose. That was a cool trip! The Children's Museum was made for locals and had a lot of interactive exhibits showing the history of Costa Rica, the history and modern day harvesting of bananas and coffee, light, space, bubbles, airplanes, and many others! It was cool to go since I got to speak to the guides in Spanish and also learned how glass is made. Also, the building of he museum used to be a penitentiary, so of course the architecture is different. The fourth week Friday was our Final Exam.
Overall, it was a really good course. I didn't think there was a big difference in processing the language here as an "intensive language" course than I have had with a 16 week long course back in the US. Sitting in the classroom for 3 and a half hours got boring after awhile and I think that two breaks of 15 minutes may have been better, but since it was an interactive course, it kept my attention throughout. I would recommend studying here for Spanish since it has been a wonderful experience so far.
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