Manuel Antonio Spanish School

See all the reviews on TripAdvisor--all five star rave reviews! This is the school you should choose: great teaching, warm collegial atmosphere, caring, helpful directors. This is the best of the four two-week Spanish schools I have attended in Costa Rica and Mexico.

Manuel Antonio Spanish School was the third Spanish school I attended this year and by far the best. The other two were in Spain and were part of large international programs. My classes in Spain had 8-10 students and were often lectures on grammar combined with worksheets and writing assignments. With so many students I had little opportunity to practice what I was learning. At Manuel Antonio I was the only student at my level and recieved 20 hours/week of private instruction that was engaging, fun and effective. My teachers Karen and Daniel had innovative activities that gave me the opportunity to practice my new skills. Plus the afternoon and evening activities were awesome. I attended the intercultural center for a game night, joined a baby turtle release at the beach, and went on the Friday afternoon market tour with Daniel. We tried at least ten different new foods and learned about the region and culture. I also would recommend the homestay as it was very comfortable, the food was delicious and I got to practice my Spanish. My advice is to choose a locally owned school that participates in the community and really cares about each student. I also appreciated all the tips on best beaches and visiting the park. All in all a great experience.

This place was amazing! We had the best time ever studying there. They gave us such thorough local information, even before we came via email, and arranged the best local tours and experiences. Karen was the best! We thought her instruction style made learning fun and easy. The instruction style and the environment made four hours a day of learning easy. Rebecca was like our language school mom, acting as the operations manager of everything from organizing amazing tours, to helping us when we thought we needed to go to a hospital, to taking us on a super fun walk to a hidden local beach. Daniel was super fun and knowledgeable. The on-site accommodation gave us everything we needed. 100% highly recommend. The only downsides were that the school is in an area that isn't easily walkable to loads of stuff (the road is kind of... scary to walk on although you can walk within 10-20 minutes to food, shops, etc.), but the local busses are super easy to use and run often to get to other areas with restaurants, beaches, town and we ended up getting a rental car for part of our stay, and also you just might want to consider if you're going to Manuel Antonio Language School there is a natural cycle of how the school operates which includes time during the super-off-peak season when they are mostly shut down and may take some time to reply to emails etc. We loved going in the rainy season (we were there in October), there weren't SOOOO many people around, and I love thunder and lightning and intense rain - I find it exciting. However, if you really want to do a lot of things and don't like rain, I would strongly suggest you consider this, as it literally rained like every single day and lightning storms were common!