It was a challenging course for complete beginners - most of the students in the group already had some understanding or experience of the language, whilst I was and still am a real beginner. The teacher Maria seemingly had to cover a lot and so went at a cracking pace. She prepared her lessons well and her delivery was good, but I felt out of my depth, despite having attempted much of the homework - particularly with regards speaking the language. I would have liked more teaching of and practice in the pronunciation. Listening to the DVD has been of some value but the spoken word is spoken so fast that I understand very little of it indeed. Although I have booked for the continuation course what I really need is to repeat the course I have just finished as I am probably now at the 'beginner' level of most of the others. I hope the continuation course is not too advanced. The quality of the IWB which the teacher had to use was awful and got progressively worse, wasting increasing time trying to get it to work ... and despite reporting it to the language school it was not repaired and the teacher had to manage with out it on at least one occasion.