Spanish Immersion Program
Embark on an unforgettable linguistic journey and enhance your Spanish proficiency with our Spanish immersive program. We offer an all-inclusive, high-intensity language learning adventure in the charming, affordable rural community of La Fortuna de Bagaces, Costa Rica.
Our program uses the Peace Corps’ proven pre-service training teaching methodology, renowned as the world’s most effective approach to language immersion.
Immerse yourself fully in the local culture by living with carefully selected Costa Rican families, with daily language classes and participating in activities like horseback riding, visiting animal sanctuaries, salsa dancing, nature hikes, and others, all adapted to develop your Spanish language abilities. Dive deep into the Spanish language and emerge with fluency and unforgettable memories from our unique immersion experience.
What You Will Learn in Our Spanish Immersion Program
Students speak Spanish from dusk till dawn in a beautiful tropical town
Our Spanish immersion program puts students in a Spanish-only speaking environment. This rapid learning curve achieves great results! Very proficient and natural conversational fluency can be achieved in a month with little to no prior knowledge of Spanish.
Language packages are offered by the week
Each week in our Spanish immersion program includes:
- 20 hours of Spanish classes per week
- Homestay (7 days of lodging, 3 meals per day, and laundry)
- Language activities (4 weekly activities with activity instructors)
- Volunteering program (optional): Help local high school seniors prepare for their exit exam’s English section
- Spanish level advances with each additional week you stay
- Transportation is available and additional.
How the classes are built
No two students here get the same lesson
Your class doesn’t exist until the night before it. Every evening, your teacher builds tomorrow’s material around two things: what you’re interested in, and what you actually did that day.
Most language schools hand you a textbook that was written for nobody in particular. We don’t use one. Your teacher writes your material after watching how your day went — the animals you saw on the trail, the ride you took, the meal you couldn’t name, the conversation you couldn’t finish.
The next morning you collect it from the print shop on your walk to class. You’re not memorising a vocabulary list. You’re learning to talk about things that already happened to you — which is why it stays in your head long after you’ve gone home.
- Saw a pizote on the way to Cabro Muco→Tomorrow’s vocabulary
- Spent the morning on horseback→Giving directions, describing the land
- Couldn’t follow dinner conversation→The exact structures you were missing
- You mentioned you cook at home→A week of kitchen Spanish
10–30
pages of material, written fresh for one student, every single day of your stay.
- You live the dayClasses in the morning, an activity in the afternoon, your host family in the evening.
- Your teacher writes that nightBuilt around what you did, what you struggled with, and what you care about.
- You pick it up on the way inThere’s a print shop on the road to class. Every morning you stop there for a document made for you and nobody else.
Where you’ll live
A room in someone’s house, not a room in a hotel
This is the part of the program that does the most work. You have twenty hours of class a week; you have the other hundred or so waking hours in a Costa Rican home, hearing Spanish and using it from the moment you get up to the moment you go to bed.
This is the part students are quietest about beforehand and loudest about afterwards. Breakfast at seven with someone’s grandmother. Being asked where you’re going, and having to answer in Spanish. Coming home at night to people who waited up to hear how the day went.
You are a guest in a home, not a customer in a guesthouse. The kitchen is open to you. So is the porch, the living room, the table where everyone ends up talking. Make coffee at eleven at night if you want to.
Almost nobody in these houses speaks English. That is difficult on the second day and it is the whole reason the program works by the second week — there is no version of the evening where you get to stop practising.
We keep a few selected homes. Not everyone in town can be a host family, and that’s deliberate.
What’s included, every week
Your place in the house
- Your own bedroom. Yours alone, with space to study.
- A bathroom — often private, sometimes shared with the family, depending on the house.
- Three meals a day, cooked at home. Usually at the family’s table, though when and where is up to you. Dietary needs arranged in advance.
- Use of the laundry room. Washing is not a service the family provides, though many do it anyway.
- The kitchen and the rest of the house, like anyone who lives there.
- A short walk to class — and a bicycle if you’d like one, to get around town.
Usually one student per family, so every conversation at that table is yours. Couples, friends and families travelling together can stay in the same home. Students come back to La Fortuna de Bagaces years afterwards, and often it is the host family they came back for.
How a family becomes a host family
This is the part we’re slowest about, because your month depends on it more than on anything else.
- We already know themWe’ve known these families personally for years. This is the town we grew up in.
- We see the house firstSomebody visits and looks at the room, the bathroom and the kitchen before a family joins.
- They’ve done this beforeMost have hosted many students and know how to talk with someone whose Spanish is two days old.
- You’re matched, not assignedWe place you with a family that fits — your interests, what you eat, whether you want children around.
Enrollment
Three steps, and no long email chain
Pick your dates, get your plan and price the same day, hold your spot.
- Tell us your dates and levelSix questions, about a minute.
- We send your plan and priceSame day, with a link to book a call if you want one.
- Hold your spot with a depositWe match you with a host family and send arrival details.
All inclusive · priced by the week
What will my stay cost?
- 80 hours of class with a certified teacher, 20 hours a week
- 28 nights of homestay, three meals a day
- 16 language activities with instructors
- Optional volunteering at the local high school
Travelling with someone? We offer a discount for two or more people — tell us in the form and we’ll include it in your quote.
Get my plan and priceNo payment now. We reply the same day.
Other aspects of the program:
Help our high school seniors prepare for the English part of their exit-exam!
No charges/remunerations for students/teachers. All volunteer-based.
Please let us know if you would be interested in teaching during your stay.
Study and learn Spanish online with one of our professors
Sign up before or after an immersion program and receive a 15% discount
Professors trained in Teaching Spanish as a Second Language (ELE – Español como Lengua Extranjera)
Connect over Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, etc.
Live 1-on-1 classes with a Spanish teacher from Costa Rica
Students have the weekends free to travel around the region. There are many sights, activities, and other attractions nearby, including:
- White water rafting
- Beach
- Zip lining
- Hikes in forests (Rincon de la Vieja nearby)
- Scuba diving
Ready when you are
Come and speak Spanish from dusk till dawn
Tell us your dates and your level, and we’ll send you a plan and a price the same day. No payment now, and no long email chain.
Get my plan and priceSix questions, about a minute.
- Any dayArrive when it suits you — classes start the next business day
- All inclusiveClasses, homestay, meals, activities
- Same-day replyUsually within a few hours