What an amazing professor Shen Laoshi is! She cover so much content, makes learning easy, tries to adapt to each student, and cares so much. I really adore her. I take this class because I enjoy her presence that much.

Shenlaoshi is honestly one of the best professors I've had at UCLA. She's super helpful and overall just a very nice lady. Her lectures were straightforward and clear. The workload consisted of weekly homework assignments and quizzes, oral recordings and occasional group projects. She's a pretty lenient grader so as long as you put some effort into the class, you'll end up with an A.

Professor Shen is a very dedicated teacher. The entire class is taught in Chinese, even when you ask for clarification. This usually isn't a problem, since intermediate-level classes should be taught in Chinese anyways. So I don't take it as a negative.

However, it seems like learning vocabulary outside of the class material is necessary to do well on exams and take-home essays because of how much has to be written and the limited scope of the textbook. If you don't go beyond the textbook vocabulary, your essays will seem very contrived.

If you aren't enthusiastic about learning Chinese, this class can get annoying. But if you do care for the subject, then Professor Shen is great.

Attendance is mandatory. On Zoom, Breakout sessions usually take up about 15-20 minutes per class. Homework is graded for completion rather than correctness. Purchasing the workbook is not needed, since she provides the homework worksheets online to be printed. The midterm and final will be most of your grade. This class uses the Cheng & Tsui Integrated Chinese series textbooks.

Courses taken: Chinese 100 A, B, C

I really like Shen laoshi. She's probably the best UCLA professor I had so far because she is always so willing to help students. Her lectures are well organized and generally easy to follow. I understand that this is an upper div Chinese, so students with a heritage background like myself would have a easier time to understand the material. This may be challenging for non heritage students, but she always tries to slow down to answer any questions. Though her lectures can be sometimes dry but students are always welcome to join in the discussions. I have to admit my Chinese had improved over the three quarters. I will continue to stay in the Chinese dept since they just have nice and kind professors.

Professor Shen is great. She's definitely concerned about student learning and wants to see you succeed in her class. She's very understanding when it comes to turning in assignments late and making up quizzes (although try not to make it a habit if you don't have a good reason...). She's been teaching Chinese for over a decade and her experience really shows in her lectures and class structure. And she always writes up these really nice handouts that include a lot of new vocabulary or elaborate on grammar points. This class is understandably difficult for anyone who is coming into her class without a background in Chinese, but she encourages students to see her at office hours. She's always willing to help you learn and if you just want to chat or practice speaking anything in Chinese, she'll help you with that as well.

As for her tests, she'll always tell you exactly what's going to be on the test beforehand. I think they can still be pretty tricky to study for since they're quite comprehensive. I would focus on knowing the texts and grammar points, the translations from homework, as well as familiarizing yourself with whichever exercises she mentions. The tests do get progressively harder as you progress through the series, as she started asking us to write short paragraphs in 100B, and my test grades have been steadily dropping from the first one in 100A :( My Chinese has definitely improved since I've taken her class.

Fun fact: she wrote the Barron's AP Chinese book!

Lovely and caring lady but very intense Chinese course. She teaches the class almost entirely in Mandarin and covers a ton of material. It's very fast-paced... You will learn a lot but will fall easily behind if you don't keep up. The exams are brutal. Make sure your schedule is flexible and dedicate much time to studying otherwise you will burn.