the Price of Language Schools

I paid for a series of classes over 6 weeks, including all private lessons and printed materials provided by the school. Books were an extra fee on top of this, which ran $50.

The language school I chose in St. Louis had great ratings. I was at a slight advantage learning Italian, as I am fluent in Spanish (college minor was Spanish); the service I got was tremendous. While this wasn't cheap -- I paid $525 with books -- I received hands-on, one-on-one training in a great setting. In six weeks, I was functionally fluent in Italian, enough for my trip to Milan in March/April of 2009. I had no problems navigating and conversing simply with locals. My only critique would be the pace at which the classes ran; at only 2 per week, for the price, I would expect a more intensive course. Overall, though, I was extremely pleased.

First of all, start studying ahead of time -- get used to the way sentence structure and pronunciation is done, and you'll save yourself a lot of headache when you're in your paid classes. Make the time of your lessons stretch by doing as much homework as possible beforehand.