The experience of Armenian 101A , Fall 2019.
The first day of class the syllabus was distributed. Listed on the syllabus are the lessons for every day the class is in session. The professor told us the first day of class that there would be no testing or quizzes.
On the syllabus there are strict instructions on how to do each lesson:
1 - read each lesson repeatedly at home until you’re comfortable with it, (note: each lesson will be read aloud during the following session by each student in the class),
2 - write out the entire lesson by hand,
3 - When we reached “optional exercises” for each lesson, those were then added to the work load,
4 - Additionally, there were 6 essays that had to be turned in on varying topics throughout the quarter with the idea that the student used the vocabulary given to them for the lesson that was due that same day. This is very time consuming. The essays would be great if the vocabulary was actually applicable to the topic we were given to write about.
During week 4 on Thursday, the list of vocabulary was given to us for lessons 1-9 (and then 10-20) in one packet. After being told there would not be any tests, we were alerted there would be a “quiz” on the following Tuesday in week 5 covering lessons 1-9. Each midterm project included several exercises that all had to be hand written and turned in (not graded). Note the necessary vocabulary was not given at the beginning of each lesson but not until the last possible class meeting prior to the quiz.
Next, while there are no actual course objectives, we were required to learn each letter in upper case, lower case and the “name of the letter” for an exam (we were not alerted to this until nearly the end of the quarter). The Armenian alphabet list was handed out on October 10 during week 2. Each class session was broken up into the introduction of three or four new letters, their names, how to write them, and then the professor reading the grammar lessons aloud directly from the textbook.
From the first of two midterms, nearly every class meeting there was a quiz, be prepared. This class takes a lot of time for memorization. Expect to recite the verb conjugations aloud with no mistakes or hesitations once they are introduced.
The textbook breaks the lessons around the alphabet and the text itself is very difficult to read or decipher the letters. The textbook while informative is black and white with no visuals to assist with memory or tips on how to remember the information provided.
The class is set up into 2 hour and 30 minute sessions, which is very long with no breaks. I think we were given maybe 2-3 total throughout the quarter.
This class was a lot of work for very little return on investment. The class sessions had extensive tangents when we could have been learning more about how to use the language. This class requires extensive memorization with very little time to do so.
In my opinion, I would not recommend this class as it is not set up for students to succeed or even acquire the language. I was told by another classmate that while he knew the language he was struggling and it was difficult for him. He told me that he no idea how I was surviving if it was that difficult for him.
This class needs to be completely reorganized with new techniques put into place in order to be successful. The workload is far too voluminous for anyone to memorize the bulk of the vocabulary. I was very disappointed by this course overall.