Luca was a very good instructor. He was very patient and pretty chill. He would always politely correct us if we made a mistake. He is Italian, which was really helpful when trying to understand Italian phonology. Attendance and participation in the Zoom breakout sessions are both parts of your grade. All homework was online and it consisted of multiple-choice questions, drag-and-drop, matching, and short responses (one word or phrase). The homework for the week was divided into three parts, with each part being due Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday respectively. It was fairly easy, so I would recommend just doing all the activities at the beginning of the week. There were only three quizzes. If you complete the practice quizzes, they shouldn't be too hard. The long response questions at the end of the quizzes were tough at times. But, if you genuinely participate in the Zoom breakout sessions and do the homework thoroughly, you should be able to score a decent amount of points. Additionally, there were three "essays" of about 100 words each. These were easy but you only get about a day to work on them. Putting effort into these essays will also help with the long response questions on the quizzes. Finally, the final exam was in the same format as the quizzes except there were a few more questions and the long response was longer. Like with the quizzes, if you complete the practice final exam you should be fine.

Professor Valdarno was so cool!! He was super flexible, meaning if we needed to submit an assignment a day late, he was totally fine with it (however I had this class during covid-19 so it was entirely online, perhaps making him a bit more lenient). He was always organized and tried to make lectures engaging for us. He was super understanding and patient with us when we didn't know something. As long as you get all the homeworks done, the class should be easy for you!

I took this class online. The Professor is chill, but does not go out of his way to help his students. Also gives no extra credit, hence there is absolutely no cushion for our grades. We have to do good on quizzes and other projects- which are also graded really harshly for no reason. This was way too much for an introductory class and I didn’t feel prepared going into tests and quizzes because in lectures I felt the professor just read what was on the slides and didn’t actually teach us and make us understand the material further. I had a hard time with Italian this quarter and a few of my classmates felt the same.