I studied for just 2 weeks at Speakeasy but had a ...

I studied for just 2 weeks at Speakeasy but had a good experience, especially as regards changing levels. The placement test put me in a lower level than was appropriate, and the school admin were very flexible about me moving up and then up again, swapping out the textbooks each time for no charge. If you find you're in the wrong level upon arrival, I'd definitely recommend speaking to your teacher on the first day and making your learning objectives clear so you're not wasting time.

I had 5 different teachers due to the level changes and found them all well-prepared and knowledgeable. In general I'd say the students' level of grammar knowledge in this school outstrips their oral ability, at least at the B1 and B2 levels, so keep that in mind when figuring out the right level for you.

The only down side for me was that I didn't find the classes to be intensive. I had 20 hours a week of lessons, but I'd say it was really just 10 hours of instruction and 10 hours of what for me was filler: watching short videos, listening to radio clips, having random discussions that initially related to an exercise but quickly veered off into irrelevant topics, reading aloud, etc. I don't know if for the other students these activities were useful, but for me, they weren't because they didn't seem to have any objective. We didn't, for instance, watch a video and then watch it again with a transcript to pick up the new vocabulary and expressions. We just watched it, had a vague little chat, then went on.

The conversation too was all free-flowing, with little correction and no imposed structure that would require us, for example, to put a new grammatical point to use while speaking. This, I think, may explain why students at the school have such low levels of spoken Spanish as compared to their grammatical understanding. They're allowed to speak however they want in class, using very simple constructions, leaving out verbs, etc. New grammar isn't practiced orally.

During my two weeks I only had homework twice, and never found that I needed to review anything taught in class at home (it was practiced over and over and over in class using photocopies). On the one side, this is good, because your 20 hours of Spanish is just that, 20 hours, no more. But on the other, for someone like me who doesn't have 20 hours of free time a week, I'd love to see Speakeasy introduce a truly intensive class for people who prefer a more academically demanding setting and are willing to supply the effort outside of class to make the lessons stick.