CHICLE Language Institute

My daughter attended language immersion schools for 4 years (school taught 80−100% in a foreign language by native speakers) when we decided to homeschool. Our biggest concern with this choice was losing the years of language we had invested in our daughter and her losing a something she absolutely loved learning.
We discovered chicle when exploring Carrboro and decided to write them about a possible group class for homeschoolers. I worked with Sara Biondi, their office manager, and she was able to organize a homeschool group class. However, the first day of class we were the only family in attendance as all the other families had decided to cancel at last minute.
Sara and the Chicle team worked with us and our budget to find a tutor solution for our daughter. We now have daytime classes at Chicle twice a week with two different teachers, Alma Manso and Perla S. which provide a fun and diverse learning experience. We feel our daughter has grown her Spanish skills more this year tutoring with Chicle than spending her entire days at an immersion school. We have been very impressed with her progress!
We have been attending Chicle classes for almost a year now and it has been an all around fantastic experience. From the organized office manager to the awesome teachers to the convenient location. We feel blessed to have found this little jewel in Carrboro!!!
Keep up the amazing work you are doing CHICLE!!! :)

I signed up at Chicle after wanting to freshen up my Spanish after almost 10 years wanting to try out a private lesson and it really is the best thing I’ve done to help dust off the language and get into practice again.
I really like how they tailor a class or lesson to your needs. If you know of several people who want to do a class they can set that up or put you in one that is already set up. They also do private tutoring which is what I am doing now after my teenage daughter and I did a group class together over the Summer. It’s a little more expensive but for me having the personalized attention and ongoing interaction has been very helpful and worth the extra cost. I took Spanish in grad school and didn’t learn as much as I am learning now.
I really love my instructor, Pilar. She is good at drawing you out and giving you feedback real time to help you speak more fluently. She is also very personable and warm and entertaining. I had Perla once and she was very nice and got both my daughter and I to practice and we enjoyed her instruction style as well.
They offer children’s programs (though might be in the summer), study abroad experiences and translation services as well.

Don’t waste your time. They have many different language classes, but the availability is limited and so is the skill of the instructors. I tried 3 different languages (all at different levels depending on my proficiency) and I found all 3 to be ineffective. I feel like I learned minimal material in 2 or 3 terms. The walls are so thin you can hear other teachers shouting next door while you’re trying to learn.
The biggest problem is it’s expensive! If you are lucky and only get a class of 4 people (I think that’s the minimum), then you get more individual attention, but if you’re in a class of 8, forget it! They make you buy their terrible textbooks that they probably get paid to sell from Barron’s and other big language companies.
The office is also sort of a mess… I hated having to deal with paying for classes and the staff not knowing what’s going on, how much I owe, etc.
You could attend (or better yet, audit) a course from UNC for better instruction and a better value!