Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB)

It is important to have regular contact to native speakers and not to concentrate on the international students if you want to profit from your stay abroad. In general, the catalan and cpanish people are nice and patient. many people think that the catalan language spoken in Barcelona prevents you from learning Spanish, that's what I thought. But it isn't true! Maybe it would be more effective staying a year in Madrid or any other spanish city, but in my opinion there is no reason not to go to Barna!!!

I had some problems answering the above questions since, at the UAB, I regard spanish to be the language of instruction although catalan was also frequently used by professors and students. I tried to choose courses in Spanish, since I speak it fluently, but it was sometimes difficult. Outside university, I could easily get around speaking spanish although in some situations, it made it more difficult to get to konw people.

Honestly, i thought i would talk better spanish than i do. I did improve my level though. In my dreams, i would live with 5 or 6 people from everywhere and we would only be able to communicate in Spanish. The thing is: easier to say, harder to find. I mean i do not regret one thing about my experience except only having more roommates would have been awesome!! But anyway, i lived with 2 american girls and one french guy. We had the most amazing time ever. It just sucked a little bit because we had big plans about talking spanish in the house, etc. and obviously we ended up talking pretty much only english. What is still really good. Just not exactly what you would expect when going to Spain! Basically most of our friends were English speaking! A few were spanish, but weren't the ones we saw most of the time. I don't know what else to say. I guess everybody has is own experience. Mine wasn't the best one to actually learn the host country language, but will still be one of my "bestest" memories/experience ever.

Im not taking into account Catalan, but it is all over the place here. Maybe i should have made more of an effort to learn it too but i just wanted to improve my spanish as much as possible, and i definitely did. That said, it would surely have been more beneficial, looking back, to have gone to a smaller town somewhere less touristy in that sense!

The first few weeks of attending classes were very difficult. I only understood about 5% of the classes. I now understand about 90% so I guess I have made some progress. I understand quite a bit of Spanish, I can have long conversations but I still don´t feel comfortable expressing myself yet.

Before I went to Spain I spoke Spanish quite well because I studied it at school and at the University. I also did a language course last year in Granada. At the UAB I participated in a catalan course because it is the oficial language here. So I can speak this language quite well now, too.