Offered:

  • Our Conversational Spanish 400-level courses are offered every Term throughout the year, pending sufficient enrollment.

Date & Time:

  • Our 400-Level Conversational Spanish courses are currently offered throughout the year (pending sufficient enrollment) on Monday evenings from 7:00-8:00pm during school Terms. Each Term consists of 8 consecutive weekly classes.

  • Our 2023 Term 1 classes begin Monday 13 February 2023, and continue for 8 consecutive weeks. The last class of the Term is held on Monday 3 April 2023.

Time Zone equivalents:

for live-streaming Zoom Sessions from New Zealand. If your Time Zone doesn't suit our live-streamed class, you can also access our courses by watching the live-recorded sessions that are posted to the course webpage each week, usually the next day.

  • Honolulu, Hawai’i: begins Sun 12 Feb 2023, 8:00-9:00pm

  • US Pacific: begins Sun 12 Feb 2023, 10:00-11:00pm

  • US Eastern: begins Mon 13 Feb 2023, 1:00-2:00am

  • London, UK: begins Mon 13 Feb 2023, 6:00-7:00am

  • Paris, France: begins Mon 13 Feb 2023, 7:00-8:00am

  • New Delhi, India: begins Mon 13 Feb 2023, 11:30am-12:30pm

  • Bangkok, Thailand: begins Mon 13 Feb 2023, 1:00-2:00pm

  • Singapore: begins Mon 13 Feb 2023, 2:00-3:00pm

  • Tokyo, Japan: begins Mon 13 Feb 2023, 3:00-4:00pm

  • Sydney, Australia: begins Mon 13 Feb 2023, 5:00-6:00pm

Description:

  • Our Conversational Spanish 401 course is specifically designed for adults (and children over 10 yrs) who wish to continue their Spanish learning and who have completed our Introductory Spanish 101–104 and Intermediate Spanish 201-204 courses or have equivalent conversational abilities as assessed by one of our Spanish language instructors. It continues learning beginning in both Introductory and Intermediate Spanish with spoken conversational Spanish practice and includes new grammar and vocabulary. Students with good spoken Spanish knowledge are welcome to enrol in our Conversational Spanish course. If unsure, please drop us an email, and we will get you in touch with our language instructors to help place you in an appropriate level course.

  • Subsequent Terms will continue to reinforce conversational Spanish, and continue to increase one’s vocabulary and retention, and focus on additional grammar.

Assessment:

If you are interested in joining this class, and haven't taken any of our earlier Spanish courses, then you may need to be assessed. This can happen easily and quickly by contacting our Language Programme Director and organising a brief conversation. This can happen via any convenient method of your choosing.

  • a quick phone call

  • a quick What's App call

  • a quick Zoom call

  • or any other convenient method.

  • Contact us at to schedule an assessment callclanedcal

Meet our Instructor:

Spanish instructor Pepa Torre, MA

Pepa comes from Andalucia, in the south of Spain, once the domain of Islam and referred to as Al-Andalus. She is the former Chair of the Waikato Hispano Latino Cultural Trust for which she has put great effort in implementing the communication strategy to be able to reach more members and achieve their mission of connecting people on a greater scale. She holds a BA in Audiovisual Communication and an MA in Photography as well as minor titles in areas such as Business and Education. She created PTS Foto Fun back in 2008, a Photography/videography studio focused on finding the inner self of each individual, creating a comfortable environment where one could express emotions and feel unique. She won first place in a National Photography Award held by Hewlett Packard and delivered numerous art exhibitions mostly shown throughout Europe. Everything she does is meant to feed her passion and learn more about human behaviour, concentrating on the idea of “prejudice” and “what is the same and different at the same time,” stressing the positive side of diversity. Pepa has also been a Flamenco music and dance teacher and performer since 2016, the same year when she started teaching Spanish privately in a variety of contexts. Nowadays you can find her working at the Waikato Settlement Centre and you can hear her hosting a radio program on Free FM called “¿Quiénes somos?” (“Who are we?”), based on the stories of everyday people from her Hispanic and Latin communities.

Location:

This class is a hybrid class with both in-person sessions in our classrooms and streamed live via Zoom.

All in-person classes are held at the EarthDiverse Centre located at 401 Anglesea Street, Hamilton Central, Hamilton (located just north of the Hamilton Central Bus Station) (entrance is located on the side of the building, see map below). Those looking for parking for our evening classes can park just in front of the building in any of the available car parks. Daytime parking can be found in our dedicated car parks, or free 2-hour on-street daytime parking can be found just in front of Anglesea Street.
Location

Distance Learning:

This course has distance-learning options for those unable to attend the live class sessions in Hamilton. Students have three options for attending our courses once they have registered:

  • Attend in-person classes in our Hamilton classrooms at the regularly scheduled day and time.

  • Attend our live on-line classroom sessions via Zoom at the regular scheduled day and time.

  • Watch the live-recorded class sessions at your leisure, at a time, day and place more suited to your schedule.

Distance-Learning options:

  • In addition to our in-person classes in Hamilton, our courses offer distance learning options for those unable to attend classes in-person. Live-streamed Hamilton classes are available via free Zoom software for those living outside the Waikato. Live-streaming allows you to participate fully in your own learning, ask questions of the instructor and participate fully in the same way as if you were in the physical classroom.

  • Those unable to attend the scheduled date and time of the actual class sessions, or those who need to miss a class or two due to previous engagements or unexpected illness, can watch any or all of the live-recorded video sessions on their computers, laptops, tablets or mobile devices and study at their own pace and in their own time.

  • Detailed instructions on how to access our distance learning components will be sent after completing your registration. There are no additional fees for this service. However, distance learners will need access to a desktop or laptop computer with a good quality web-camera (tablet devices and mobile phones can also access our live-streamed classes), a built-in microphone (most modern laptops have built-in microphones) or a headset with a microphone. You will also need to download and install the free Zoom software on your computer or device. Those accessing the video recordings will be able to do so with a simple web browser on any device.

Pricing options:

All prices in New Zealand dollars and includes GST. Unwaged includes students, seniors and retirees.

Course curriculum:

Week by week new material will be posted throughout the duration of the course. Video recordings of each weekly session will be posted here after 1-2 days after each class.

    1. EarthDiverse Course Information

    2. EarthDiverse Zoom instructions

Additional course info:

  • Videos and PDF content of class presentations or whiteboard notes are uploaded weekly after each live session
  • Begins on Mon 13 Feb 2023
  • NZ time: Mondays 7:00 - 8:00pm

Notes:

  • Those who cannot make the class meeting day and time either in-person or via live Zoom sessions may consider accessing this course through the weekly recorded video sessions. Class videos are posted within 24 hours of each live class session and are available for your own personal learning session on a day and time of your choosing.

Materials:

  • All materials are included in the course fees. These are developed by our instructors and distributed as PDF files as the course progresses.

  • You will only require a pen or pencil, a notebook for taking your own class notes, and a loose-leaf binder. Any notes that our instructor writes on the class digital whiteboard will be emailed to you as a PDF file so that you can print these out at home and add them to your own notebook.

Prerequisites:

  • Having previously taken our Introductory Spanish 101-104 and Intermediate Spanish 201-204 courses

  • Sufficient understanding of Conversational Spanish as determined by the instructor.

  • This course is open to both adults and kids 10 years and older.