Options for Spanish 5 / AP Spanish Language / other advanced Spanish?

[jplain]

In the event Ray Leven cannot get enough students for a Spanish 5 class next year, does anyone have suggestions for a student with very strong Spanish skills?  (BTW, if anyone is interested in Spanish 5 w/Ray Leven next year, feel free to message me.)

She wants a synchronous (once or twice weekly) online small *group* class with very little in-class use of English.  We already have twice weekly one-on-one Skype tutoring/conversation covered.  She wants to continue improving her Spanish language skills, so a mom-created film or history course won’t check the box.

Dual enrollment is not an option; the local CC uses the same textbook she used for Spanish 1-3 and offers no advanced courses.  The local private college has suspended single class enrollments and audits.

She is not interested in the AP Spanish Language exam (and I don’t blame her), but she might consider an AP Spanish Language class as long as soul-sucking AP exam prep is not beat to death.  

The Potter School’s sample classes look okay . . . but we’d very much prefer a non-religious provider.  (Edit to add: on watching the sample classes more carefully, the teacher uses a LOT of English.  Far too much for advanced Spanish classes, IMO.)

Pennsylvania Homeschoolers has a new instructor this year (Erin Weber), but I haven’t found any video samples or feedback on her class, and  it sounds like class size may be larger than we’d like.  (Edit to add: I spoke with Sra Weber, and although there are 17 students, there are 3 different time options for the weekly live meeting, which brings it down to a very reasonable meeting size. 👍)

Debra Bell/AIM Academy has an Advanced Spanish class taught by David Nance, but I haven’t found any instructor videos that aren’t more or less all in English, though to be fair the videos I found are aimed at novice students.

Even though their class descriptions look great, the Johns Hopkins CTY eligibility gauntlet doesn’t appeal to this kid, the instructors are a complete black box (they are always hiring), plus we can’t afford their prices anyway. 😜

WTM Academy is offering Spanish 4/5 for the first time next year.  (They added Spanish 3 this year.)  I’m intrigued, but since most of the other students will be coming from Spanish 3, I wonder if it will end up being less challenging than Leven’s Spanish 4 . . .

 

Edited February 8, 2021 by jplain
Updating info on specific classes

[zoo_keeper]

I would NOT recommend WTMA's Spanish 4/5. My eldest was in the first Spanish 1 class and followed up with the first Spanish 2 class. She earned A's in both. However, as a foreign languages undergrad myself, I noticed that her grasp of the language was atrocious so I started watching recording midway through year 2 and was horrified by the lack of rigor (teacher relied on students to present topics, lots of watching videos/songs, busywork that wasn't graded, etc.) whereas I was expecting conjugation drills and grammar lessons. The only thing I did like was that they read a short book each year in Spanish (something I took over myself and ordered additional novels from the company for the kids to read this past summer).

Suspicious, I had eldest tested at The Potters School. Instead of placing into Spanish 3 for this year, she placed right back into Spanish 1. We lost 2 years of instruction and eldest is mortified. (One of her younger sisters who took HSA placed into TPS Spanish 1B, so ahead of her). 

NOW (and I need to say kudos to WTMA for this), that instructor is no longer with WTMA (I wrote some pretty heated emails earlier this year, as did another parent in the class who came from HSA to WTMA Spanish 2). So the instructor slated to teach Spanish 4 (and all of the other Spanish classes at WTMA) could adopt a much more rigorous approach. HOWEVER, the curriculum in the sample syllabus is the same (I was not impressed, super vague and unclear). Further, if you're going into WTMA Spanish 4 next year, your student will be in that inaugural class that started Spanish 1 & 2 with my eldest. While they may be somewhat more up to speed taking Spanish 3 with someone else this year, their foundation is likely weaker than students coming from Leven's instruction.

Just my opinion (and I apologize, this is a pretty sore point for me.)

[jplain]

Thank you, that’s really helpful. But yikes, I hope your daughter regains her confidence and is able to enjoy language learning in the future!  

Mine was also enrolled in that first WTMA Spanish 1 class in Fall 2018, but she decided it wasn’t a good fit after the first few meetings.  I’m sure the last minute instructor change threw everyone for a loop, but it is a shame WTMA didn’t realize sooner that there were also issues with the new instructor.

(It probably seems like my timeline is a year off, but after rejecting a second provider’s Spanish 1 class in late Sept 2018, my daughter finally landed in Leven‘s Spanish 1.  Third time was the charm, and her cohort was strong enough to accelerate and complete both Spanish 2 & 3 the following year.)
 

[jplain]

On 5/21/2021 at 8:45 AM, Orin Conor said:

sorry, can you please tell me if WTMA Spanish 1 might be suitable for an adult student? I recently decided to start learning Spanish, and now I'm trying to figure out which program is better to choose. 
thanks in advance 

I do not believe adults are allowed to enroll in WTMA’s catalog of classes for homeschoolers.  There are occasional classes aimed at parents, but I don’t believe they have ever done language classes for parents.