GERMAN 1
Elementary German
Description: Lecture, five hours; laboratory, one hour. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2022 - Anna is such an amazing Professor! I took German 1 just for fun and I think it was a great class. Anna was very helpful and accommodating. She was always there to help and she was very patient. If you are struggling with German make sure to go to her office hours. She will definitely make time for you. I will take German again with Professor Anna if I have the chance! (:
Fall 2022 - Anna is such an amazing Professor! I took German 1 just for fun and I think it was a great class. Anna was very helpful and accommodating. She was always there to help and she was very patient. If you are struggling with German make sure to go to her office hours. She will definitely make time for you. I will take German again with Professor Anna if I have the chance! (:
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2022 - Anna is a literal angel. She is so approachable and kind, always going out of her way to make accommodations for her students. Learning a new language for the first time can seem so intimidating and scary, but she made it feel easy and fun! Her lectures were interactive and engaging, and I loved her teaching style - lots of charades to explain herself while she speaks to us in German. Although she's not a strict lecturer, that doesn't mean her students didn't actually learn from the content. Her easygoing approach made us all feel more comfortable with and capable of retaining the content; we all learned a lot! All the class projects were really great and helpful with comprehension, and I always felt like I learned a lot without the projects feeling overbearing and stressful. I was even absent for over a week for medical reasons, and she was so understanding and helpful with extensions. The midterm and final are both super chill, you have a week to make infinite attempts for the best grade on an online platform. Ultimately Anna wants you to succeed and so clearly loves her job. She loves engaging with her students. She's just a gem and I'm forever grateful that she's the person who gave me an introduction to this language.
Fall 2022 - Anna is a literal angel. She is so approachable and kind, always going out of her way to make accommodations for her students. Learning a new language for the first time can seem so intimidating and scary, but she made it feel easy and fun! Her lectures were interactive and engaging, and I loved her teaching style - lots of charades to explain herself while she speaks to us in German. Although she's not a strict lecturer, that doesn't mean her students didn't actually learn from the content. Her easygoing approach made us all feel more comfortable with and capable of retaining the content; we all learned a lot! All the class projects were really great and helpful with comprehension, and I always felt like I learned a lot without the projects feeling overbearing and stressful. I was even absent for over a week for medical reasons, and she was so understanding and helpful with extensions. The midterm and final are both super chill, you have a week to make infinite attempts for the best grade on an online platform. Ultimately Anna wants you to succeed and so clearly loves her job. She loves engaging with her students. She's just a gem and I'm forever grateful that she's the person who gave me an introduction to this language.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - DO NOT TAKE GERMAN WITH DR. FUCHS! Dr. Fuchs is the worst language teacher I have ever had. I have studied many languages in my life but I’ve never had such a bad learning experience. Week after week, Dr. Fuchs showed us her lack of support and extreme demotivation. The worst part of her “teaching approach” is that she does not motivate her students to learn German. Dr. Fuchs looks profoundly bored during class and annoyed when students ask her questions. Once she replied to a classmate’s grammar question by saying: “Ah, yeah, that’s because in German we have many rules and many exceptions,” without providing any explanation to the student. Here is a list of the reasons why I think Dr. Fuchs should not be teaching German language courses: 1. Lack of knowledge of the course materials: when asked about the online book, she would always tell us to contact the support team on the book’s website. However, most questions were related to the homework that she had assigned but never looked at. As an example, she assigned the same homework twice, and when asked about it, she decided to delete that whole week of homework (which was counterproductive, since we could not access that homework to study for the exam anymore). It seemed that she didn't want to grade any homework. 2. It was clear to students that someone else had prepared the course materials and that she was just using what another professor had planned. 3. Lack of support to students: when asked any kind of question, she would look irritated and start patronizing, as if we were annoying children. She also never replied to students' emails. 4. Most of the homework and midterms were graded electronically, but Dr. Fuchs never graded any of the BLINK homework that needed to be graded by her. I imagine she does that at the end of the quarter, but that is not helpful because there is no way of receiving individual feedback throughout the course. 5. Dr. Fuchs didn't know our names and didn't care about our individual learning processes. She always looked disinterested and lazy. Of course, German is a difficult language, but precisely because of this and because of the decrease of students in her department, Dr. Fuchs should care more about her class and enjoy the opportunity that has been given to her to teach in a top university.
Winter 2021 - DO NOT TAKE GERMAN WITH DR. FUCHS! Dr. Fuchs is the worst language teacher I have ever had. I have studied many languages in my life but I’ve never had such a bad learning experience. Week after week, Dr. Fuchs showed us her lack of support and extreme demotivation. The worst part of her “teaching approach” is that she does not motivate her students to learn German. Dr. Fuchs looks profoundly bored during class and annoyed when students ask her questions. Once she replied to a classmate’s grammar question by saying: “Ah, yeah, that’s because in German we have many rules and many exceptions,” without providing any explanation to the student. Here is a list of the reasons why I think Dr. Fuchs should not be teaching German language courses: 1. Lack of knowledge of the course materials: when asked about the online book, she would always tell us to contact the support team on the book’s website. However, most questions were related to the homework that she had assigned but never looked at. As an example, she assigned the same homework twice, and when asked about it, she decided to delete that whole week of homework (which was counterproductive, since we could not access that homework to study for the exam anymore). It seemed that she didn't want to grade any homework. 2. It was clear to students that someone else had prepared the course materials and that she was just using what another professor had planned. 3. Lack of support to students: when asked any kind of question, she would look irritated and start patronizing, as if we were annoying children. She also never replied to students' emails. 4. Most of the homework and midterms were graded electronically, but Dr. Fuchs never graded any of the BLINK homework that needed to be graded by her. I imagine she does that at the end of the quarter, but that is not helpful because there is no way of receiving individual feedback throughout the course. 5. Dr. Fuchs didn't know our names and didn't care about our individual learning processes. She always looked disinterested and lazy. Of course, German is a difficult language, but precisely because of this and because of the decrease of students in her department, Dr. Fuchs should care more about her class and enjoy the opportunity that has been given to her to teach in a top university.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2016 - Marco is the best. He is a super reasonable TA that wants everyone to do well. The material is easy and he won't give busy work or make you do an assignment if he doesn't find it helpful. He will laugh at your terrible pronunciation, but you probably deserve it and he's really funny so it's all good. Also he can't pronounce the word "uncomfortable" in English so do with that what you will. Definitely take this class; I learned a lot and it was not difficult.
Winter 2016 - Marco is the best. He is a super reasonable TA that wants everyone to do well. The material is easy and he won't give busy work or make you do an assignment if he doesn't find it helpful. He will laugh at your terrible pronunciation, but you probably deserve it and he's really funny so it's all good. Also he can't pronounce the word "uncomfortable" in English so do with that what you will. Definitely take this class; I learned a lot and it was not difficult.
Most Helpful Review
Though listed under German studies, he also regurgitated his tangents in other foriegn language/literature courses. Already warned and criticized by the dept. chair(s), he continues his 99% babble and 1% course related lectures. In a classroom that started out with 15+ people, size says it all in one now of 6, including an old 65 year cracker who "Has nothing else to do." In lectures that sound more like AA meetings centered solely on him, his autobiographical sprees explicate more about his own shattered marraige, love of Star Trek, and fundamentalist Christian friends than the assigned material your assignments, tests and grades are based on. Based on the philosophy that lectures clarifying his various irritatingly thick, serotonin triggering novels is the equivalent of him doing the reading for us, he justifies and continues his routine tangents.
Though listed under German studies, he also regurgitated his tangents in other foriegn language/literature courses. Already warned and criticized by the dept. chair(s), he continues his 99% babble and 1% course related lectures. In a classroom that started out with 15+ people, size says it all in one now of 6, including an old 65 year cracker who "Has nothing else to do." In lectures that sound more like AA meetings centered solely on him, his autobiographical sprees explicate more about his own shattered marraige, love of Star Trek, and fundamentalist Christian friends than the assigned material your assignments, tests and grades are based on. Based on the philosophy that lectures clarifying his various irritatingly thick, serotonin triggering novels is the equivalent of him doing the reading for us, he justifies and continues his routine tangents.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2021 - Kyle is one of the best professors I have had! He is very engaging, chill, and accommodating. Naturally, German 1 has a lot of material to cover and he does a great job covering it in such a short amount of time. The class consists of an online textbook (Blink Learning) which is modern but also can be hard to navigate in the beginning. There are a few writing assignments and a midterm and a final. In terms of workload though, while it may seem like a lot, Kyle walks you through everything and is very accommodating with his deadlines. He opted to give less homework during midterm week and he always made sure to ask us if the homework was too much. He also extended certain deadlines like papers and made an effort to not overload us with German if the energy in class was too low. Also, the midterm and final were just ccle tests that we were given 10 days to take and could have as many attempts to do as possible. Literally, the only way to fail this class is to not participate/show up to class. I took this class in a hybrid fashion where 2 lectures were in person while 1 was online. I definitely recommend opting for the more IRL option if given the choice because the class is definitely difficult when it is online. Kyle likes to pick on people to speak and practice with (which sounds intimidating but is most definitely not) and over zoom this was very difficult. Honestly, the in-person class appears as more of a discussion rather than a straight-up lecture where he always checks in to answer questions and check for understanding. He always has slides too and posts them to ccle before class so that we can follow along with him if needed and prep ahead of time (not required though). Overall, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND KYLE ROSEN FOR ANY GERMAN CLASS. He also studies philosophy if you are interested in that and he is always open to talking about it with people outside of class.
Fall 2021 - Kyle is one of the best professors I have had! He is very engaging, chill, and accommodating. Naturally, German 1 has a lot of material to cover and he does a great job covering it in such a short amount of time. The class consists of an online textbook (Blink Learning) which is modern but also can be hard to navigate in the beginning. There are a few writing assignments and a midterm and a final. In terms of workload though, while it may seem like a lot, Kyle walks you through everything and is very accommodating with his deadlines. He opted to give less homework during midterm week and he always made sure to ask us if the homework was too much. He also extended certain deadlines like papers and made an effort to not overload us with German if the energy in class was too low. Also, the midterm and final were just ccle tests that we were given 10 days to take and could have as many attempts to do as possible. Literally, the only way to fail this class is to not participate/show up to class. I took this class in a hybrid fashion where 2 lectures were in person while 1 was online. I definitely recommend opting for the more IRL option if given the choice because the class is definitely difficult when it is online. Kyle likes to pick on people to speak and practice with (which sounds intimidating but is most definitely not) and over zoom this was very difficult. Honestly, the in-person class appears as more of a discussion rather than a straight-up lecture where he always checks in to answer questions and check for understanding. He always has slides too and posts them to ccle before class so that we can follow along with him if needed and prep ahead of time (not required though). Overall, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND KYLE ROSEN FOR ANY GERMAN CLASS. He also studies philosophy if you are interested in that and he is always open to talking about it with people outside of class.