Table Of ContentDELE SIELE EXAM PREP
IMMERSION
Our award-winning partner residential school in La Antigua
Guatemala, PROBIGUA
Self-study at home for the DELE exam (or its more flexible new
online version, the SIELE and its American equivalent, the
OPI) via Skype is convenient, personalized and affordable. But
some of you may want to supplement this with a total immersion
in Hispanic culture and conversation (especially during the
last week or so before the set date for the examen DELE, or
before your appointment for doing the SIELE). Think of
homestay with a native Spanish-speaking family. Intensive,
one-on-one tutoring that follows your existing DELEhelp study
plan and methodology. Affordable, and situated in a beautiful
and interesting environment…
DELEhelp is partnered with the renowned language school
PROBIGUA in La Antigua Guatemala, to offer just such a
possibility to our students. One can say that we are the
internet arm of PROBIGUA, and they in turn are our residential
school arm. In fact, we are the academic content provider to
PROBIGUA, so that your existing study plan and preferred
learning methodology will be respected and continued with,
when you come here for immersion. It is quite likely that you
will come face-to-face with some of your DELEhelp Skype
tutors, if you choose to do your immersive “pre-exam
polishing” at PROBIGUA!
In this Blog-post we will give you more information about
PROBIGUA as our recommended DELE and SIELE exam preparation
immersion destination, as well as on the beautiful, historic
colonial capital city of La Antigua Guatemala (a UNESCO World
Heritage site), but if you want to see a quick 1-minute video
on the subject rather than read all about it, you can simply
click on the image below, and be taken straight to the video:
Click on image for video
PROBIGUA stands for Proyecto Bibliotecas Guatemala. The school
(which is non-profit) is one of the two legs of what is a
laudable social responsibility venture. The other leg, is the
promotion of learning in rural areas of Guatemala, which
PROBIGUA does through building schools, and the running of
their famous “libraries on wheels” (converted U.S. school
buses) to schools and villages in the countryside. This is
done with the aid of the Swiss PROBIGUA Foundation.
Here are some images related to the mobile libraries and the
school building project:
:
As you can see, PROBIGUA won the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation’s prestigious “Access to Learning Award” in 2001,
and their efforts were also recognised by pope Francis in
2016.
By coming to PROBIGUA for your DELE / SIELE exam preparation
immersion, you will therefore not only be attending a top
school, but you will be contributing to job creation for the
expert maestras as well, plus you will have the opportunity to
see more of Guatemala than just La Antigua and participate in
PROBIGUA’s very interesting and laudable social and community
activities.
The PROBIGUA language school is housed in the heart of La
Antigua Guatemala, 10 minutes from the central plaza and
located in the shadow of its most beautiful church – the La
Merced. Its facilities offer a pleasant and technologically
well equipped learning environment. Classes are one-on-one, in
attractive surroundings, as you can see from these photos
below. As said, DELEhelp is PROBIGUA’s academic content
provider and internet arm, so your existing study plan and
methodology will seamlessly integrate.
Historic La Antigua Guatemala was once the capital of all
Spain’s imperial possessions between Panama and Mexico. With
its cobbled streets and colonial architecture (well preserved,
except for the many signs of the might of the region’s
earthquakes!) La Antigua is regarded as the best-conserved
colonial city in Central America and is now also the latter
region’s most-visited tourist destination.
Historic, plus scenically
beautiful in its green valley
among its three volcanos (Volcan
Fuego is still active) as well
as strikingly cosmopolitan, this
little city that seems to have
woken up like Rip van Winkle
boasts countless excellent
restaurants and attractions for its many visitors. La Antigua
is also regarded as one of the world’s top centers for the
teaching of Spanish as foreign language. This is thanks to the
locals naturally speaking correctly, slowly, while
articulating clearly and without much of an accent (the local
way of speaking is due to La Antigua having been the capital
and seat of the learned bureaucracy as well as of many
religious orders and one of the oldest universities in all of
the Americas; the locals were therefore formed in the
Castilian upper-class way of speaking, unlike the lowland
areas of Latin America where the Andalusian accent and
tradition of rapid speech was the formative norm).
The reason why La Antigua went into a
two-hundred year deep sleep, was
probably political – although the great
Santa Martha earthquake of 1773 was a
destructive reality that provided a
convenient excuse. The 1770’s were
turbulent times in the Americas, and
the Bourbon dynasty in Spain wasn’t
that well settled either. In 1773 a new
Captain-General was sent to what was
then known as Santiago de los
Caballeros (la Antigua’s former name)
with orders to i.a. dis-empower the very powerful clergy, who
exerted considerable political influence from their great
cathedrals, monasteries and palaces which dominated almost
every square block of the colonial city. Shortly after the new
Captain-General’s arrival, the great earthquake flattened much
of the city, and he ordered that the capital needed to be
moved to the “safer” site of the present-day Guatemala City,
some 50 miles away. (A previous earthquake had struck La
Antigua some 20 years earlier, from which it had by 1773
mostly been restored to its proper imperial splendour, and
most locals had wanted to re-build again, after the 1773
quake, rather than move).
This order to move the capital
lock, stock and barrel, had the
effect of forcing the once-
wealthy clergy not to restore
again their imposing edifices,
but to abandon them and go and
construct anew, from scratch, at
the new site, during tough
economic times for the Spanish
empire. The order to move was made final by the king in 1775,
literally on pain of death, and the city was almost completely
abandoned, to the point of losing its name and coming to be
referred to as “la Antigua Guatemala” (i.e., old Guatemala).
This exodus, ironically, ensured that it was saved from
modernisation. Today the ruins of the once-great edifices
still abound, untouched, dotted all over our little city and
serving now as awe-inspiring tourist attractions.
For more about La Antigua’s importance as a UNESCO World
Heritage Site, you can follow this link:
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/65
The New York Times recently published an excellent short video
(6 minutes) on La Antigua as destination, which will give you
a good idea of what to see and do
here: http://tinyurl.com/zl8fsk9
Click on this image to go to
PROBIGUA Facebook page
So, for an affordable, interesting and academically worthwhile
DELE SIELE exam prep immersion ahead of sitting your exam,
come to PROBIGUA in La Antigua Guatemala. Here your DELEhelp
tuition will continue seamlessly. You can also be part of a
laudable social venture with rewarding community interaction
opportunities, and you will be surrounded by spectacularly
beautiful cultural and natural scenery, while enjoying the
perfect climate of the “city of eternal spring”. To go to
PROBIGUA’s own Facebook page, just click on the image on the
right.
Saludos cordiales
Willem
Click on image to ask for FREE Workbook
Description:Spanish phrasebook underpinned by the science of the DELE system (which is based your DELE exam preparation effective. It is recognized that
