ESADE Business School

Some classes were taught in English and nearly all students and staff spoke some English so communication was not a problem at ESADE. In Barcelona, while most people speak Castilian Spanish in addition to Catalan, you will generally overhear conversations in Catalan, see most television in Catalan, and read most signs in Catalan. With a basic knowledge of Spanish or any other romance language, Catalan is quite easy to read. However, you must seek out opportunities to practice "castellano" as you will not just pick it up by osmosis.

I had very few language problems toward the end of the term. The only thing that was frustrating was when I was mugged and I had to go to the police station and explain what happened. I had a very dificult time explaining what happened and the police officers were quite rude and seemed as if they didn't care what had happened. It may be too much to ask, but it would have been nice if there was one person who spoke English, or at least understood it.

The language preparation course offered by ESADE is a good start and good quality, but too short to be really helpful in the long run. You should already speak some Spanish before you arrive. In general I would say that it is difficult to improve one's Spanish as it is difficult to talk to and make friends with locals. Catalan was not a problem for me, everyone speaks Spanish in Barcelona. Try to live with spanish natives.

In Korea no one use other languages. so it's quite hard to learn and speak them fluently. In january when I came in Barcelona, I barely spoke spanish. so from january to march I took classes which were given only in english. But I learned spanish in EUROCENTER, an institute for language and practiced it with my friends. so from april up to now I'm in course in spanish.

In the beginning the courses at ESADE were pretty difficult. I didn´t speak so much Spanish. But since you want to interact with other people and understand the content of the courses you are motivated to learn very rapidly. Besides that I had a Spanish roommate that helped me a lot with my Spanish.

although Catalan is the second language in Barcelona, it was no problem to communicate in Spanish - at the university the professors were very flexible and thought the classes mainly in Spanish, but we could do exams in English - also questions during classes could be asked in English