LOS ANGELES, Calif. /California Newswire/ — Bright Spanish, an organization comprised of a small group of Spanish teachers, is offering free six-week Spanish courses online. The classes are taught live in a video conference "classroom," where students listen to the teacher and participate in real time. The group hopes to make Spanish learning more accessible by providing interactive, guided classes that anyone can take regardless of their location or budget.
Using PowerPoint presentations instead of chalkboards, chat instead of raising hands, and pop-up poll questions instead of quizzes, the teachers at Bright Spanish strive to make their classes feel and function as much like a regular classroom as possible. Students can even turn on their microphones and repeat words after the teacher to practice their pronunciation.
Each class lasts 45 minutes, and meets twice a week for six weeks. That's nine hours of class time, and the Bright Spanish teachers try to cover a lot of ground. The Beginner's course assumes students don't know a single word of Spanish; starting from there, they learn about nouns and articles, conjugating verbs in the simple present tense, the most common irregular verbs, common verbs and nouns in everyday speech, and a variety of other useful tips and expressions. Every class caps off with three common phrases for the students to learn and remember.
According to Bright Spanish's teachers, the courses have been going quite well. "We usually have anywhere from twenty-forty people enroll for a class," said Anna Rasshivkina, one of the teachers. "Generally, about ten of them show up regularly to the class. So it's a very manageable size, and we can give time to individual students – to answer their questions, review things they want to spend more time on, and so on."
Currently, Bright Spanish is wrapping up its second Beginner's course, and is about midway through its third. Enrollment is open for a one-day six and a half hour intensive Beginner's course on July 13, as well as its first Beginner's/Intermediate course, which is scheduled to start on Tuesday, June 25 and run until August 1, 2013. It will meet every Tuesday and Thursday at 5:45 p.m.-6:30 p.m. Pacific Time.
For information on the current class schedule, visit http://www.brightspanish.com/schedule . For questions, feel free to contact Bright Spanish directly at info[at]brightspanish.com.
Copyright © 2013 CaliforniaNewswire® and Neotrope®. California Newswire is a publication of the Neotrope News Network and a U.S. reg. TM of Neotrope.
