I met Sharon on a Sunday in November, and I was the third teacher to open a door for her that autumn.

Most of my students arrive straight from the airport, jet-lagged and nervous, with a phrasebook and a week ahead of them. Sharon arrived from Barcelona, on her third consecutive week of homestay immersion, having already lived with two of my colleagues: Pilar in Valencia and Mónica in Barcelona. She walked in with two weeks of Spain already inside her, a recovered grammar, a notebook full of excursions, and more confidence than she had started with.

That made my week both easier and more interesting than usual. I was not laying foundations. I was building on someone else’s, and then finding out what Sharon actually wanted to talk about.

Who Sharon is

Sharon is an American citizen, and retired, although “retired” is a poor description of how she spends her time.

She takes jazz dancing classes, which keep her moving and let her be creative. She plays tennis and pickleball, and she was the first to tell me, laughing, that she is not very good at either. She plays for the pleasure of it. And she volunteers at a women’s homeless shelter, which tells you most of what you need to know about her character: she is genuinely interested in other people, and she wants to be useful.

That is also why she came to us. Sharon has Spanish-speaking friends, and she was tired of the gap between the Spanish she once knew and the Spanish she needed to really talk with them. Not exams. Not a certificate. Conversation.

What Valencia had already done: Pilar Martínez, week one

By the time Sharon reached me I had Pilar’s notes, and Sharon herself filled in the rest over dinner.

Rebuilding the foundations in class

Valencia was about recovery rather than beginnings. Sharon had a good deal of passive knowledge and very little confidence in using it, so Pilar went back to the foundations and rebuilt them properly. They worked through the present tense in full, covering regular, irregular and reflexive verbs and verbs of the gustar type, from the opening units of the Spanish Express Verb Workbook. Expressing likes and preferences, introducing herself and her family, and the functional vocabulary of Holidays I, Units 1 and 2: greetings, farewells, numbers, days of the week. Short written and oral exercises after each explanation, with plenty of repetition.

Paella, horchata and a cave

What Sharon talked about, though, was Valencia itself. On her very first day she walked into the Plaza del Ayuntamiento in the middle of the annual paella competition, the city’s great culinary event, and tasted the real thing surrounded by the crowd. She strolled the marina at Port Saplaya, among the painted houses, with a glass of horchata. She went underground into the river caves of San José, which as any teacher will tell you is excellent adjective practice. She walked up into the mountain village of Gilet for the panoramic views, browsed La Lonja and the Plaza de la Virgen and the Plaza de la Reina in Valencia city center, did a proper shop in a Spanish supermarket, and finished the week at an interactive light and music show inside Colegio Pías.

What Barcelona had already done: Mónica Romero, week two

From the Valencian coast she went north to Dosrius, a village in the Maresme hills behind Barcelona, and a bilingual corner of Spain. That is a useful thing for a student to discover, because it teaches you that “Spanish” is not one single experience.

Conversation, and ser versus estar

With Mónica the classes combined conversation work at A2 level with a dedicated lesson on ser and estar, vocabulary building, and further exercises from the Holidays workbook.

From the Maresme hills to Passeig de Gràcia

Outside class, the week was full: the artistic forest of Ernest Borràs, the church of Sant Iscle and Santa Victòria, the town hall, the old communal washhouse known as El Comú, and the Forn & Fúria bakery. Casa Batlló and tapas at Txapela on Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona city center. An excursion to Argentona, taking in the tram, Puig i Cadafalch’s house, the Museu del Càntir, the church of Sant Julià and the Plaça Nova. Girona, which she liked so much on a free afternoon that she went back for a whole day. Mass in Mataró, then the old center and the port and the beach.

A concert with her cousin

And one evening in Barcelona she went to a concert at Fizz Bar to hear her cousin James play guitar and sing. Not many of my students manage Gaudí, tapas and live family music on the same day.

My week: Seville

So this is what arrived at my door: a student with good comprehension, a rebuilt present tense, and a lingering shyness about speaking.

What we worked on in class

We worked with Español en Marcha, Nueva Edición, Level A2. We revisited ser and estar, because nobody ever finishes with ser and estar, and went on to impersonal forms such as se hace and se come, imperatives, and some of the trickier uses of the definite and indefinite articles. We did the vocabulary of the house, aspiradora, sacacorchos, and one of the most useful structures I know for a learner who wants to keep a conversation going: ¿para qué sirve? Sirve para…

Learning Spanish through art, history and religion

But what truly interested Sharon was art, history and religion in Seville. So I built our lessons around prepared topics and took them out into the city, and she discovered the language through the things she actually wanted to discuss. Her progress that week went well beyond Spanish: she came away with a real feel for Spanish traditions, for Andalusian gastronomy, and above all for the religious life of this city.

Where she finished, and what comes next

By Saturday she had found her voice. Her speaking confidence at the end of the week was not the confidence she came in with, and she has kept it up since through everyday conversation at home with the family.

My recommendation to her, and it stands: carry on with the same A2 book we used.

Spanish for the Conversations That Matter 

Three of us taught Sharon that autumn, and none of us saw the whole thing. Pilar rebuilt her grammar. Mónica put it to work in a Catalan village and a great city. I got the pleasant part: a student who could already hold a conversation, and who wanted to spend it talking about altarpieces and Holy Week.

What I keep coming back to is why she came at all. Sharon did not travel to Spain for a certificate. She came because she has friends she wanted to talk to properly, and three weeks later she could. That is the whole job, really.

¿Y tú? A week, two, or three, with one host teacher or, like Sharon, with three. We will build the course around what you actually want to be able to say.

So, book your free call with Spanish Express and let us know when to pick you up from the airport, port, train or bus station.

You can explore more real immersion experiences here:

👉 SHIP Stories of Our Previous Students

For personalised guidance and programme details, you can contact our founder directly:

Mónica Romero, Founder and Director, Spanish Express

📞 Phone / WhatsApp: +44 7903 867 894

📧 Email: monicaromero@spanishexpress.co.uk