I was very lucky to find this school while passing on foot. I'm told it's the only school in town run by Nicas. In any case, my instructor was great great great fun and the program we established was perfect for me - not a rigid curriculum, but definitely focused on the grammar and conversation needs I had. Administration was friendly, flexible about scheduling, and suuuuuuuuper helfpul overall. I didn't do a homestay, so I'm leaving a neutral three stars for the Accomodations category, but otherwise I can't recommend it enough.

I studied at Dariana for a total of 6 weeks of 1-on-1 instruction and had 2 instructors in that time; I didn't take part in any of the other activities nor did I use them for accommodations. The school in general, and the 2 instructors in particular, did an excellent job of really matching the instruction to my learning objectives throughout the time I studied there. I was there to improve my Spanish for professional/business purposes working in multinational corporate marketing environments, and it had been 25 years since I studied Spanish in school so I was quite rusty. The instructors helped me progress consistently, starting with helping me to re-learn the fundamentals (verb tenses, etc.) then progressing to expand vocabulary & skill set related to my objectives. I was impressed at how they creatively changed up the tactics as I progressed - not only helping me to work on weaker areas but also keeping the learning process interesting. During the time I was in Nicaragua I also spent 4 weeks in a different city and used 2 different language schools while there - Dariana in Leon was by far the best of the 3 I tried: more professional, the best course materials/book, decent facilities, and more effective instructors who really pushed me (at my request). Dariana was slightly more expensive (but still an excellent value) but is well worth it for anyone who truly wants to learn as much as possible in a limited amount of time...and the owners and instructors are nice people, too. In short, I highly recommend Dariana.

I know this has great rating but my 2 weeks were just the opposite. "teacher" just spoke, didn't correct anything: my verb tenses; my pronunciation nor vocabulary. I would stop in my conversation to ask "es correcto? la palabra?" When asked to do verb exercises - teacher responded - how! I would give them things I wanted to do to just get some learning of Spanish. Very sadly disappointed.