Most schools offer a weekly deal that includes four or five hours one-on-one tuition a day, plus full board with a local family, at an inclusive cost of around US$130 a week. It's important to bear in mind that the success of the exercise is dependent both on your personal commitment to study and on the enthusiasm and aptitude of your teacher - if you are not happy with the teacher you've been allocated, ask for another. Insist on knowing the number of other students that will be sharing your family house; some schools pack as many as ten foreigners in with one family. Virtually all schools have a student liaison officer, usually an English-speaking foreigner who acts as a go-between for students and teachers, so if you're a complete beginner there will usually be someone around who you can communicate with.

The first decision to make is to choose where you want to study. By far the most popular choices are the towns of Antigua and Quetzaltenango, though Lago de Atitlán is also starting to become an estabished language centre. Beautiful Antigua is undoubtedly an excellent place to study Spanish: though the major drawback is that there are so many other students and tourists here that you'll probably end up spending your evenings speaking English. Quetzaltenango (Xela) has a very different atmosphere, with a much stronger "Guatemalan" character and far fewer tourists. Despite it being one of the most popular places in the world to study Spanish, it's still possible to really immerse yourself in the language and local culture. Several new language schools have recently been set up in the Lago de Atitlán area, in Panajachel and San Pedro La Laguna, with more planned in other lakeside villages. As yet, tuition standards in the Atitlán area are only average, but such is the draw of the lake that the schools have quickly become popular with international travellers. If you already speak some basic Spanish, you could study somewhere where you're unlikely to be able to speak any English at all, such as Huehuetenango, Petén or Cobán.