Universidad de Alcalá (UAH)

I believe my written skills, vocabulary, grammar and listening skills were all improved drastically by my stay in Spain, but due to the limited interest of local students in socialising with Erasmus students, I found that my conversational skills were improved only to a slight degree. This is why I heartily recommend finding a house/room to share with a local individual, preferably a student.

I went to Spain without any knowledge of the Spanish language and culture in January of 2005 and within the first 2 months developed the ability to converse in everyday situations. I returned to the United States in May of 2005 and really wanted to continue learning and developing my spanish communication skills so I decided to return to Madrid in January of 2006-May 2006. After this time abroad I felt extremly confident with the abilities that I had developed.

I was definitely more confident in speaking the language by the time I left the country than when I had first arrived. My regular meetings with certain Spanish students helped to gain this confidence.

I had a lot of opportunity to use Spanish in my daily interactions with people outside of my dorm and I felt like my Spanish improved a lot, but most specifically in academic contexts.

I came in with a good basis of academic knowledge of the language but became much more at ease speaking and and understanding the spoken language including slang and colloquialisms.

I had already knowledge in this language, that allowed me to communicate easily from the start. Thanks to this experience, I learnt a lot and widened my vocabulary