Learn Spanish Over A Glass Of Sangria

In the basement of a Waterstones around the corner from Tottenham Court station, the sound of broken Spanish combined with laughter can be heard.

Amongst readers in the book shop a group of seven people have gathered to improve their Spanish over a glass of sangria and fresh tapas.

The class focusses on basic food related phrases such as naming ingredients and asking what’s on their plate. Many of the attendees have joined the course because they’re traveling to a Spanish speaking country and wanted practical, real life lessons.

Stefan Marcus, 27, from Canada has a high school level background in Spanish but wanted to refresh his memory since he has decided to move to Spain. “The vocabulary is good, they mix it up and I like that it is very interactive. My grammar is all right but my vocabulary is terrible because when I talk Spanish with friends we always talk about the same stuff so this class is great.”

The lesson is very relaxed and combines learning with group games which get everyone involved. The weekly classes take place in different locations around central London and cost £30.

Carla Jones, 30, who grew up in Gran Canaria as a child, founded Stripey Spanish, the company behind the lessons. The company which is completely self-funded was set up last year.

Jones, who has a background in teaching says she developed different ways in engaging her students in the subject matter and then applied her skills to this new project. “I left the classroom and went to teach adults full time. I started to be more creative with my approaches and basically I came up with the idea and the idea of a company kind of grew around that. As a teacher who wants to teach in the best way possible I realised we would need to get a bit of a name for ourselves and start letting people know of this different way of learning.”

According to Jones, her reasons behind providing such a relaxed class is the social aspect to the situations. The fact that the students are socialising and having a good time together rather than being sat in a classroom just watching a teacher means everyone is much more engaged. It’s also a motivational factor, people are more likely to keep coming to the classes when they’re also having a good time… and of course the alcohol helps.

“You’re much more likely to remember a language that you’ve been introduced to because it has associations which bring your brain to life like smells, sounds, sights and taste. If you say “te quiero vino” when asking for a glass of wine and someone comes along and gives you a glass of wine, your brain is going to be much more active and remember it much more clearly,” says Jones.

“These nights are not designed to make someone go from zero to intermediate. These lessons are designed to give people who already have some structure going on in their life and to increase and practice their Spanish,” says Jones. For people who really want to make significant progress in their language skills there are 12 week courses which start in May. The course is designed to get more complex and developed over the 12 weeks.

Interested in a Spanish class? Go to https://stripeyspanish.com/