Reviews for Advanced Conversation

The course was exactly what I was looking for when I enrolled. I needed an opportunity to speak Spanish regularly in conversations that were complex enough to require me to use my advanced command of Spanish grammar and vocabulary. The course gave me that opportunity.

Rolando is a gifted teacher. He a great conversationalist and a fantastic listener. Rolando makes his students feel comfortable expressing themselves. It would be easy for him to let grammer mistakes slide, however, he takes the time to correct them. In addition, he explains why one word maybe a better option than another (for example tratar (to try) vs. probar (to test or try) or why a phrase should be said in a particular order. This habit is extremely beneficial to the student who is practicing their Spanish and the students who are listening to the conversation. I look forward to my conversation classes with Rolando. Learning Spanish with Rolando is an exciting adventure!

This is a great course. As always with Berges, the instructor (Rolando) was top notch. He's curious, empathetic, and patient, and is very knowledgeable. The only downside to this course is that at times there are individuals who are clearly not at the advanced level. I understand they need to be exposed to those with more advanced Spanish to improve but I think Berges could do a better job vetting participants and maybe steering them to some private lessons before enrollment in an advanced course.

Estoy disfrutando este clase muchisimo. Los otros estudiantes son muy interesantes y inteligentes y por eso estamos, en además de conversaciónes de nuestros vidas y qué sucedió durante la semana pasada, estamos leyendo cuentos cortos de varios escritores. También escuchamos canciones y discutir las letras. Esto hace la clase muy cultural y muy divertido. Gracias Nicolás!

This is a super fun course for practicing real conversation. Every class session is different.

The advanced classes are not only instructive, but the subjects under discussion are always very interesting, meaningful, and sometimes just plain fun. I look forward to each class and highly recommend these classes, and Berges Institute in general, as a way to learn and improve your Spanish while having an enjoyable experience. Five stars!

Nicolas does a great job keeping the conversation interesting and at an appropriate level. The class has a good pace. We always have differing levels of proficiency and Nicolas is very good at keeping the learning and the interaction strong.

I have enjoyed this class so much because of the enthusiasm of the teacher, Nicolás, and the interesting students. I appreciate the cultural aspect discussing music, literature, current events, movies, etc. all in Spanish! I would sign up for any class that Nicolás is teaching.

This course is very helpful for me to practice my Spanish in conversations and review my vocabulary. Nicolas is very good at keeping the conversation going and creating interesting topics. There are many different accents which challenges me as a non-native speaker. I would give this class 4.5 stars.

I loved this conversation class! We were a small group, first three then four, very diverse in age and background. We spoke about a wide range of topics, the climate crisis and the environment was one that we all shared and led to alot of lively conversations and introduction of new vocabulary words. We were given a great variety of homework assignments like listening and reading the lyrics of a popular salsa song, watching and discussing a movie in Spanish and listening to a blog that led to some great conversations. The instructor asked us to share our screen to show a text that we had written for homework, and we read it together and he corrected our mistakes, mostly having to do with preposition usage. I would definitely sign up again and recommend this class to other advanced conversation students.

This course was great! I think my Spanish has gotten a lot better already and I've gained more confidence speaking, and I am continuing taking classes with Nicolas.

Good way to continue to improve Spanish. I don't think there is much difference between the intermediate level and advanced level actually for continuing students.

una de las mejores clases que atendi'

Very worthwhile. Always good conversations about interesting topics. Very helpful in improving my Spanish.

conversation classes with Alejandro are great! they are casual and help you think on your toes in spanish.

Great way to keep practicing Spanish.

Advanced conversation is an enjoyable class and a worthwhile learning experience. I absolutely recommend trying it.

I have taken many classes with Berges over the years, but this was my first class with Rolando, and at this point I am convinced that all of the teachers at Berges are stellar. Rolando perfectly balanced the class to make sure that we were constantly learning new words and phrases and correcting our conjugations with good conversation flow and friendly atmosphere. I really enjoyed the class and look forward to more with Rolando!

It was great. I keep signing up and coming back. So that says everything, right?

Victor is a gem, always responsive and helpful.

Nico's Spanish is beautiful, but of course - it's Colombian ; ) His explanations are clear, and he speaks at a relatively normal pace to build our oral comprehension. Nico is knowledgeable about many subjects and when he isn't, he shows intellectual curiosity, another plus in an educator!

Nicolas is quite a lot of fun, and we have had a terrific group of people. Because we're an advanced group, the discussion starts spontaneously and flows from there. It's especially wonderful when there is back-and-forth among the students. Whenever we ask a grammar question, Nico answers well. I also think that it would be good to include a grammar point in the conversation evenings based on what surfaces each time. Perhaps, Nico can check in with the next group to take "the pulse" about that idea.

Nicolas facilitated a wonderful conversation group with three of us, who were all aligned in many views and interests. We talked and laughed and discussed new vocabulary and grammar, when we asked questions. It was an intimate highly conversant group, and Nicolas was joyful and interested in us. Five stars*****

The instructor's knowledge of current events and culture was ride ranging, making for a stimulating conversation every weekend. The class size was small so the discussion time was evenly distributed. And the teacher did not overly correct, making it easy for the conversation to flow.

It was great. I signed up again for the same class and teacher. So obviously I felt it was worth my time. He did a good job of making sure that everyone got to both speak and listen. He seems like a cool guy too.

It was great!

Rolando was great and kept the conversation course interesting and fun! My Spanish improved a ton because he made sure we talked about a wide range of topics.

This was my second time taking Advanced Conversation with Rolando, so at this point it has become part of my Saturday routine. The class was very small, possibly due to the pandemic and being online, or perhaps simply because there aren't as many students at this level. This means we all get ample opportunity to speak and listen, and I feel like we've gotten to know each other pretty well by now, because Rolando usually starts off by asking us all how our week was before delving into sharing about whatever we've read or watched this week. Rolando is the best kind of teacher--he makes everyone feel comfortable enough to engage with each other and have real, natural conversations rather than "teacher asks question, student responds, teacher asks another student a question, student responds, etc." Grammatical or vocabulary corrections are quick so as not to disrupt the flow of conversation, and since we're online, he'll often just make the quick correction and type it in the chat so we can follow up on our own. I think the other two students in this session were more advanced than I am, so I also learned a lot just from listening to them carefully. I'll be back for the next session!

I wasn't sure how I would like taking an online course, but Nicolas was great at making me feel at ease from Day 1. I enjoyed chatting with the other students in the class, and the sense of community we developed over video calls was astonishing.

We were a group of all women, and Nicolas was wonderfully comfortable in leading discussions among us. His Spanish is beautiful, with clarity and expressiveness, so he is easy to comprehend. Beyond the topics of discussion, we often ventured into other areas of interest like movies, books, and music - in Spanish, of course! Advanced Conversation is a good platform for building confidence, proficiency and vocabulary. Nicolas makes it fun!

I really enjoyed the format of the conversation course. Reading about and discussing current events was a great way to learn new words and practice discussing opinions and hypothetical situations.

The course was excellent! I have been taking conversation classes at Berges for several years - the quality of the content and teachers is what keeps me coming back. I love Rolando's teaching style - he is very engaging and asks great questions that keep the conversation flowing and encourage students to think outside of the box and use new vocabulary.

Great course as usual. Real study of Spanish language + fun place to socialize.

A well run class in which everyone spoke pretty equally. The instructor was careful to assure that we all spoke.

The conversation class with Rolando was very helpful. I feel more confident in expressing myself in Spanish. The teacher's attitude encouraged us to speak freely on many topics and his corrections were gentle and helpful. The students are serious about learning but we still had fun.

Nicolas had us chatting away in Spanish as if it were easy. His input was subtle enough to make us aware, but not distracted by, our errors. That gave us freedom to express ourselves without the inhibitions language student usually suffer from.

I had an incredible experience in my advanced conversation classes led by Nicolás. He was helpful, interactive, and extremely friendly. Throughout the classes I was able to build my confidence in speaking which was one of the most important things that I gained while taking this course. I feel that my speaking skills have grown exponentially in such a short amount of time. Thank you, Berges! And thank you Nicolás!

I loved my time here!

The classes are small with students who want to improve. The teacher facilitates the class pleasantly, making necessary corrections gently and is open and has a nice sense of humor.

I really enjoyed this class. Rolando kept the conversation fun and flowing. Usually was a small group which made for a good amount of talking per person.

Levels are all over the place. I’m guessing that students should probably take an oral proficiency test before being allowed to take an advance conversation course. I stopped going after the third class as it was not helpful at all to me.

I enjoyed the class. We always had interesting conversation. It would be cool if Berges embedded grammar lessons into the conversation curriculum. Just mini lessons about topics that aren't part of the five grammar classes.

I really enjoyed this course! I thought Rolando was a very patient instructor and a good fit for an advanced conversation class. I also feel that my conversation skills improved over the course of the class and I enjoyed getting to know the other students. I would have liked a bit more variety in the structure of class (it got a bit repetitive after a while) but that's a small thing - overall, it was great and I will definitely be taking it again.

Very friendly and engaged instructor, ideal size of class and good dynamics within the group so that we always had interesting discussions and topics to talk about. Maybe the level and speed of the conversation was a little too low for me but the course was still worth it.

Maybe I just got lucky, but there was a great group dynamic, and we opened up quite a bit in each others' company. We touched on some remarkably profound conversation topics for the level of Spanish we knew. If anyone switched to English, the others nudged her back to Spanish. In no small part, of course, as always, this was thanks to Alejandro, who was good at facilitating and prompting people to talk about engaging topics. I'm a little sorry I didn't get my classmates contacts so we could stay in touch. It's rare that I am in such a diverse group, in terms of professional and personal backgrounds.

The Advanced Conversation class, at Berges Institute, was a great resource and opportunity to refine my Spanish speaking skills. Jennifer Guedes was an excellent professor throughout the course, pushing us to enhance our speaking abilities. She created a comfortable environment that is essential to grow as a language learning.

very friendly instructor and group, laid back atmosphere, fun discussions

I definitely enjoyed this course, overall! Nelson clearly enjoys teaching and the members of our class clicked in a great way. He asks interesting questions and conversation flowed relatively easily throughout our time together. I also appreciated that Nelson did not try to enunciate so clearly all the time. It felt more organic and real and forced me to use context clues to figure out what he was saying. All of that said, I think there were areas where several of us struggled (the typical ones - por/para, ser/estar, subjunctive) and it would have been helpful to take a step back sometimes for a quick grammar lesson (like 2-5 minutes). Nelson would pose hypothetical questions to try to get us to use certain tenses, which made for fun and interesting conversation, but often did not accomplish the objective. I think it would be valuable to have more strategies to intentionally incorporate practice with certain grammar stumbling-blocks more often because I did not feel I improved in these areas throughout the course.

We had interesting conversation. Nelson made sure to introduce the use of various tenses. He also corrected our vocabulary and conjugations The class itself had a good group of students.

I definitely get a lot of practice understanding and speaking Spanish with advanced vocabulary, conjugations and grammar. One suggestion I would make is for the HW to be more functional and engaging, and by giving so many choices of topics to read for discussion it is too much and often not practical for the teacher to go over in class. I also think it would be better if the individual teacher assigned HW for each class. Perhaps just watching one episode of a TV show in Spanish on Netflix.