Here at UniSpain, we have teamed up with an established Spanish au pair agency to launch a new au pair service, which offers you the chance to combine au pairing in Spain with a top-quality Spanish language course. This is ideal for those wanting to stay in Spain long-term and work as an au pair whilst also learning the Spanish language.
1. Complete immersion: As an au pair, you will live with a Spanish family. This will allow you to adapt to the Spanish way of life- customs, cuisine, mealtime hours, etc. In this way, you can avoid the common trap when studying Spanish abroad- making friends only with other foreigners and living in Spain as a tourist. This is a fantastic opportunity to ensure you will be surrounded by the Spanish language and culture at all times.
2. Better language learning: as you will be studying Spanish each day, you will learn the foundations of Spanish grammar and cover all aspects of language learning: speaking, listening, reading and writing. You then have the opportunity to practice what you have learnt in class in real-life situations when with your host family. If au pairing without taking Spanish classes, there is the danger that you will pick up children’s Spanish, which is often not grammatically correct. However, with our au pair service this is far less likely to occur. Additionally, we can assure that you will be able to study Spanish for 4 hours each day- other au pair schemes may offer the chance to take classes but no others can guarantee this number of hours and most normal au pairs therefore can only take a few hours of class each week. Typically (although this does vary according to the family), you will take the children to school, then go to class, come back in time to pick them up from school and then supervise them. Don’t forget that you will also receive a qualification from an accredited Spanish school, which will look impressive on your CV.
3. Cost-effective: If you were studying Spanish in Spain, you would have to pay not only for the course, but also for flights, accommodation and food, amongst other expenses. Using our au pair service, you pay only an initial fee of €200 for us to match you to the perfect family for you (free if you sign up for a course of minimum 8 weeks), as well as for your Spanish course and flights. The rest- rent, bills, food- is all covered by the family. As if that wasn’t enough, you will also be paid a weekly allowance, which again varies according to the family, but will be a minimum of €75 per week.
4. Support: This especially applies if it is your first time going to live abroad. Living with a family can reduce the feelings of homesickness and ease you into life abroad. You will have accommodation sorted, and your family can guide you if you have any queries or encounter any problems- you won’t feel as if you’ve been thrown into the deep end.
5. Long-term option: if you want to sign up to our au pair service, you must be prepared to au pair for a minimum of 3 months, however, usually families expect au pairs to stay from between 6 months up to 1 full year. Of course, you do not need to be taking Spanish classes throughout the entire time- we recommend around 12 weeks.
There is no doubt that our au pair service offers you the best of both worlds- both au pairing and studying Spanish- as well as proving to be a very inexpensive option. So if you are a native English speaker, do consider signing up!
