kappra said:
I'm surprised that no one ever seems to mention CUI (Centro Universitario de Idiomas) . . . . It is also part of UBA . . . .
This was the school at which I studied (for a month in the "intensive" program) when I first determined to learn the language. The following year, I spent a month in the Laboratorio.
Why the move? The CUI, though founded as part of the School of
Agronomy at the UBA, now is privately owned and managed (a provision in the sale of the Centro allows its owners to make reference to the UBA, however, and thus confuse everyone -- or, at the least, to confuse us foreigners); its faculty are contractors, generally without training in the teaching of languages to non-native speakers. The Laboratorio de Idiomas, by contrast, remains part of the university, properly situated where one would expect to find instruction in foreign languages; and its faculty are academically trained as teachers of foreign languages. Also considerable is the difference in tuition: the Laboratorio, as an institute within a public university, charges considerably less, even to non-Argentines, than the private, for-profit CUI.
The move benefitted me: I learned more and better in the Laboratorio than in the CUI, despite the occasionally intrusive noise from the street.