The Spanish Academy

The Spanish Academy: language tuition in Norfolk and online

The Spanish Academy is a language school offering tuition in Spanish (Castellano), French, English, German and Italian. Its students range from beginners to advanced level and include both adults and children of all ages. Teaching is delivered in group, individual and online formats, and the school describes the atmosphere of its lessons as friendly and relaxed.

Group and individual lessons

Group lessons run from beginner to advanced level and take place in the academy's classrooms in Norfolk. Sessions are offered during the day and in the evening, organised on a monthly basis. For those who prefer to work alone, the academy also provides individual lessons from beginner to advanced level, which can be tailored to specific requirements for work, business or pleasure. Private duo lessons are also offered for couples or friends who wish to learn together.

Online tuition and exam preparation

Online language lessons are available via Zoom, both during the day and in the evening, at flexible times. The academy also offers online tuition for GCSE, IGCSE and A Level in all the languages it teaches.

Five languages on the course list

The current course catalogue comprises five languages, each with its own course page:

• Spanish
• English
• French
• German
• Italian

The teaching team

The academy's tutors are described as holding enhanced DBS checks. The team is led by Harriet Tuckett, company director and Spanish tutor, who holds a BA (Hons) and is a Chartered Linguist (MCIL CL). She grew up on the Costa Blanca, where she lived for sixteen years and became fluent in the language, and taught at an International Language School in Spain before returning to the UK. Educated at Rugby School, she obtained her degree in Spanish from the University of Chester and qualified as a Chartered Linguist in 2010, the same year she founded The Spanish Academy. She has taught in secondary schools across Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, specialises in Spanish GCSE and A Level tuition, and now teaches both online and face to face, including students from UK public schools such as Eton, Harrow and Radley.

Jennifer Wightwick teaches French, German and English. A graduate of Bristol University in French and German, she spent a year abroad as an English Language Assistant in a secondary school in south-west Germany and holds a Masters in Translation & Interpreting. She trained as a secondary school teacher at the University of East Anglia in Norwich and completed an online course in teaching English as a Foreign Language. After her first year as a qualified teacher in two secondary schools in Essex and Cambridgeshire, she began private tutoring for The Spanish Academy in February 2016, teaching a wide range of people and age groups as well as GCSE and A Level students from local and national schools across the UK.

Emma Cobb teaches Italian and Spanish. She graduated from the University of Manchester in Italian and Spanish, took a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course in 2019 and used that training to begin tutoring in both languages. She registered as a language tutor in January 2020 and has since tutored online, both privately and in small groups.

What clients say

The site reproduces a series of client comments, including one from a couple who had been taking lessons for three years, a learner who began studying Spanish at almost 80, and a parent whose daughters were helped with Spanish, French and German, the eldest achieving a grade 9 in German GCSE. These are individual accounts rather than a general assessment of the school.