Description

The summer Spanish Language study abroad program in Buenos Aires, Argentina offers intensive language training for beginning and intermediate-level Spanish students through a focus on cultural immersion and community-based language learning. The program aims to provide students with measurable language advancement through ACTFL-based placement and instruction. This intensive summer session introduces students to the unique Spanish of the Rio de la Plata region, and Argentina through specially designed intensive CIEE Spanish language courses offered at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales. The program's language components are designed to help students link new language skills with prior knowledge, and to provide skills and strategies to consolidate, deepen and make significant progress in their Spanish abilities. The program also provides diverse opportunities for students to experience and integrate themselves into the local Argentine culture and enhance their language learning experience by living with a local "Porteno" host family.

Academic Program
This intensive summer program lasts six weeks. All academic activities are dedicated to Spanish language acquisition through formal classroom instruction combined with experiential and cultural education activities aimed at facilitating language learning through local cultural studies. Students complete 14 hours of class per week, offered entirely in Spanish. Students are divided into distinct language level groups (profiles) according to their language ability as determined by ACTFL-based pre-program assessments. Students are evaluated and assessed using two methods. The first, an online assessment prior to leaving the U.S. provides an initial indicator of language skills to be completed and returned to Resident Staff in Buenos Aires. The second, completed once students arrive in Buenos Aires, consists of written and oral exams in person. Students within any given Spanish profile (level) must complete two mandatory three-credit courses. Content and teaching methods are supervised by the CIEE Spanish Language Academic Coordinator. All courses are taught in Spanish.

Academic Culture
Instructional methods and teaching standards will be familiar to most students who have studied foreign languages on typical U.S. college campuses. All instructors are local Argentines versed in delivery of second language instruction and in ACTFL standards of the levels they teach. Program staff and resources are available to assist students in navigating any challenges faced in adapting to differences in academic culture. Students are introduced to and prepared for the academic life of the program through orientation activities and materials, ongoing advising, and contact and language exchange with local students.