Victoria is a truly amazing professor! She makes lectures very interactive and engaging, and very happily answers people's questions. Her passion for the subject matter is very apparent- you can see the excitement in her eyes. Additionally, in her office hours, she is always extremely helpful and patiently clarifies concepts. She also replies to emails pretty promptly. If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask Victoria!

The homework is very manageable- there's about one assignment per week. It is graded on accuracy but it's not overly difficult and most of the answers can be found in the slides.

There are two open note exams, and again, are relatively easy if you (1) pay attention in class, (2) try on the homework, and (3) do some studying on your own time.

I really loved Victoria and her class and will miss having this class. What we learned was so interesting, and Victoria is such a caring professor so taking SPAN M35 is soo worth it!

I learned so much in this class! Very sad this course is coming to an end. Professor Mateu is super clear, helpful, and engaging in all of her lectures. She provides lots of supplemental material, so it's super easy and accessible to practice some of the harder concepts (not that there are too many challenging concepts). The homework is fair, a very clear reflection of the course material, and the questions appropriately prepare you for the midterm and final exams (both of which are online, timed, and very reasonable). As long as you show up to class, engage with the material, and apply yourself the slightest bit, I assure you you'll find yourself feeling interested by the coursework and lectures. Had Isabel as a TA- she is very lovely: willing to help out wherever she can, super caring.

Victoria is a truly amazing professor! She makes lectures very interactive and engaging, and very happily answers people's questions. Her passion for the subject matter is very apparent- you can see the excitement in her eyes. Additionally, in her office hours, she is always extremely helpful and patiently clarifies concepts. She also replies to emails pretty promptly. If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask Victoria!

The homework is very manageable- there's about one assignment per week. It is graded on accuracy but it's not overly difficult and most of the answers can be found in the slides.

There are two open note exams, and again, are relatively easy if you (1) pay attention in class, (2) try on the homework, and (3) do some studying on your own time.

I really loved Victoria and her class and will miss having this class. What we learned was so interesting, and Victoria is such a caring professor so taking PORTGSE M35 is soo worth it!

Now I will start this review off by saying that Professor Mateu is a sweetheart- great professor who is extremely educated and passionate about her field. But don't be fooled by this class being offered up as a GE- it's apart of the Spanish Linguistics minor- and it shows as it's not for beginners (pace wise). The class moves by quickly- and when you get to the more difficult topics (such as syntax trees, x bars, and phonological rules/problems) you'll feel a bit stuck because her teaching style is more so her giving summaries as if she's trying to refresh the class on a topic they already know. The TA strike happened to be occurring at this time- so she was really lenient with her last 2 assignments (graded on completion), and if they're back by the time you take this class just know they're extremely helpful. Another thing about the class- learning about the history and breakdown of words and breaking sentences down into trees for about 2 hours twice a week is a bit boring.... but you do have to maintain focus because she moves so quickly- so take from this review what you will.

C140 is an extremely difficult class, but Victoria is a lovely, helpful, and sweet professor. You can learn a lot from C140. She doesn't want to give anyone bad grades. I swear I don't really deserve my A because I feel like I just did so bad in my midterm and final. But still, Victoria just curved everything to make sure that everyone receive a decent grade. The lectures are very clear and Victoria is always happy to answer your questions. She doesn't care much about the results, she just wants to see that you are working hard and you are learning in the progress. I recommend this class if you are interested in doing linguistic researches in the future. It really makes you more think critically and you can really develop your research skills in her class.

Victoria is a great professor. If you have trouble with accents, you may need to focus more, but she's always willing to stop and explain something more if someone asks a question. She's passionate about the topic and really cares about student success.

Took this class as a GE and loved it! Even though it's not required, it's really helpful if you know Spanish or Portuguese since a lot of the examples are in Spanish/Portuguese. I wouldn't recommend taking the class if you don't have any background with either language, otherwise you might have a lot more difficulty learning the material, especially since you need to come up with examples on the hw in Spanish or Portuguese. We didn't need to write any papers, but there were weekly hw assignments that were graded on accuracy. Since the class was asynchronous, the lectures were all posted on CCLE. The lectures can be kind of lengthy though, and you had to watch them before Tuesday at 9am even if your discussion was on another day. For participation, there'd be a couple of questions embedded throughout the lectures that you had to answer and submit, but you as long as you try your best to answer most of them, it's okay if you leave some blank. The material for the most part was pretty straightforward, but I think the hardest concept in class was learning the IPA and phrase structure trees. Overall, I'd recommend taking this class!

This class was totally chill and definitely worth it for an easy g.e. I actually saw a lot of people complaining in the groupme but there were only like 8 assignments for the whole quarter and I never got below an 85 on all of them even though I barely paid attention. She does take attendance in lectures but I was doing work or napping for a few of them tbh and it was fine. I signed up hoping to further my knowledge of Spanish or learn a little Portuguese but I'll tell you now that's not what this class is about, it's a linguistics class that uses examples in Sp and Port. Professor Mateu doesn't even speak Portuguese. That aside, I still thought the subject matter was interesting and overall enjoyed coming to class.

This class is a must if you're looking for a chill G.E.! Obviously, with all classes, you're going to have to put in a little work but compared to many other G.E.s I've taken, this is slight work. Also Professor Mateu is incredibly helpful and makes the class super interesting. 10/10 recommend.

If you are interested in learning more about Spanish or Portuguese, do not take this class. It is focused on linguistics and is very technical. It only uses those two languages as occasional examples compared to English. I wouldn't consider this class an easy GE, but I found the material interesting and manageable with a little bit of time and effort. Professor and TAs were very helpful and approachable.