Dear Friend Welcome to the Solemar School!
Thanks a lot for your interest in combining your holiday with the study of the Italian language and culture.
Our Language School in Sicily has been working successfully for more than 16 years aiming at offering highly qualified Italian courses in a friendly atmosphere at favourable prices.
Our participants stay in very charming holiday houses in a small bay about 15 km from Palermo.
As we enjoy a pleasant climate all year round, it is possible to have a relaxing beach and a stunning culture holiday together.
Those who would like to live in well refined holiday houses, boarding on their own, should take our offers, hereafter described, into account.
If you want to bring your children, we are able to offer a very efficient and qualified baby-sitting service during the hours of the lesson, or a children suited language course.
If you wish to choose our school in Cefalù, you can stay either in an old Sicilian style apartment, or in host families, but also leisurely in a comfortable sea side hotel, which is equipped with excellent tourist facilities.
If you are interested in our courses, send us the enrolment form within at least 3 weeks before the beginning of the course; otherwise you should contact us directly to make sure that there are vacancies.
In order to distinguish our school from less serious organisations of language courses, you may enquire at your nearest Italian Cultural Centre who will provide all the information required.
References of former students, who attended our courses, can also be provided.After receiving your enrolment form we will send you precise information on how to reach the school.
We are already looking forward to welcoming you !

With our best wishes from sunny Sicily.

Thomas Grüssner & Maria Carnevale

SICILY
The Mediterranean island which enchants with its arts, culture and nature. We have been organising our language courses for 16 years in two places in Sicily.

CONCEPT
At Mongerbino, lessons are dealt outdoors, weather permitting. In this way, the student learns without missing out on the sun and the splendid ocean view. We assure that you cannot find a more appropriate condition for learning. We have a central location with classical modern classrooms.

At Cefalù, our students use the rooms of an ancient school, which, today, is partly inhabited by a nuns' order. The school also has an outdoor courtyard. Language courses, of a two weeks medium length (40 lesson units), take place from Monday to Friday in the morning hours. It is possible, of course, to reserve a week only, or to prolong the frequency, having, beforehand, the certainty that the course continuation will seriously consider the knowledge level reached until that moment. The integration into the appropriate groups will be decided through a preliminary written valuation test and a short guided conversation. Usually groups for lessons are formed by 4 - 5 students (max. 8 per lesson)

COURSES

By booking an "intensive" Italian course (2 weeks - 40 lesson units of 45 min. distributed into 4 lesson units each day), beginners, after two weeks' lessons, possess a wide vocabulary to express themselves and to understand, not disregarding the construction of an excellent grammar basis, seen as a means and not as a purpose, onto which one could continue to build up a serious study of the Italian language. Students with pre-knowledge enrich their vocabulary and learn to go more and more deeply into the beauty of the Italian language. Students of advanced levesl, too, and even teachers of Italian as L2, have the opportunity to attend a course that offers practicing their language skills with our highly qualified teachers. Our school issues a professional certificate at the end of such a course.

"Personal" Italian course - 2 weeks' "intensive" course + 10 individual - personalized - lesson units " an individual way to learn Italian even better"…
The results you have reached by attending the "intensive" course are even more consolidated during the 10 extra lessons. While getting one-to-one instruction, the student has an opportunity her to practice the vocabulary and the grammar structures he/she has learned during the group lessons. During such personalized lessons, the student can express his/her linguistic needs and thus accelerate his/her language learning process.

Italian course "business" - 2 weeks - 6 lesson units of 45 min. per day. For all those people who, for working reasons or personal desire, have decided to learn Italian very quickly, without missing out on the advantages of the group lessons dynamic.
 

Individual lessons. the students decide the lesson units and their length. A didactical itinerary according to one's own language background and needs will be decided in collaboration with one's own teacher. Following an agreed upon schedule and program of study, the collaboration of other teachers is also forseen. While keeping our methodical-didactical sstructure, each kind of course also aims at considering the students' particular needs and wishes.

Our well trained teachers claim the most extensive experience in the instruction of the Italian language, known as L2 in Sicily, and have a degree in literary subjects. They constantly update their knowledge about current teaching proposals and didactical instruments. They deal with courses of all levels: ranging from that of absolute beginners level to the preparatory one for those who wish to teach the Italian language abroad. The teaching methodology follows the most advanced research lines of glottodidactic and developes, equally, all the linguistic abilities: reading, writing, listening and comprehension and, stressing most of all, fluency in oral production. All didactic materials are provided free of charge by the school.