At Travel Notes, we get a number of website submissions from language schools; most of them for learning Spanish. Unfortunately, we don't list them all and sometimes it's hard to explain why one was listed and another not.

I was therefore intrigued when we were asked to review 123TeachMe - a Spanish Language Schools Directory.

The colour scheme of the website looks a little passive and some of the clip art in the Matching Game is a bit naff, but by moving the words across to the 'graphics' I did learn a few new Spanish words.

While billed as a 'Spanish Language Schools Directory', there's plenty of practical help for those wishing to learn Spanish online; from Beginner Spanish Lessons to Intermediates.

Looking at the directory again, schools are supposedly sorted by location and activity.

The location part is easy enough but I found the 'activity' section rather confusing; especially as when I clicked through to a few of the websites I didn't see much about the 'keyword' activities they claimed to offer.

Some of the websites 123TeachMe list, we definitely wouldn't have linked to; like the 'one page' on a Fortune City free webspace. And for one of the schools in Paraguay, the link went to Lonely Planet.

I was wondering how schools went about getting themselves listed and eventually found out in the FAQ section. I also learnt that some 'language school' websites were fronts for sales agents.

No wonder we get so many language school submissions to Travel Notes. And maybe that's why we don't list them all. Something just doesn't feel right when we read the details on our submission form, or visit the so-called language school webite; although 123TeachMe claim that 'it is often impossible for a student to differentiate between the website of a legitimate language school and the website of a sales agent'.

I hope for your sake that we can, otherwise try 123TeachMe.com.

Technorati: Learning Spanish