El Consorci per a la Normalització Lingüística (Consortium for Linguistic Standardisation), which handles teaching Catalan outside of the school system, has seen a boom in sign-ups by adults this year. Notable is the 13% increase in people wanting places on beginners (inicial) courses.
A total of 24,000 people signed up for the Consorci's Catalan courses this September. Compared with last year, that's up 13% for beginners courses, for those with know prior knowledge of the language, and up 4% for basic (bàsic) courses, for those who want to gain day-to-day communication skills.
The statistics show growing interest in learning Catalan. In response, the Consortium has increased the offer of beginners courses by 7%. As for sign-ups for these courses, they've gone from 1,788 in September 2017 to 2,014 this year.
As for the basic courses, sign-ups rose from 11,991 last year to 12,497 this year.
Online
Sign-ups for online Catalan courses (2,147 of the 24,000) have grown 15% with respect to September 2017. This shows a significant uptick in those interested in advanced (superior) courses: from 211 to 298 sign-ups. Also growing online is interest in lower-intermediate (elemental) courses, up to 151 sign-ups from 111.