There's really not much to say about the professor, except that she's really good at teaching and that the grade distribution really is that good.

Of course, Chinese is a memorization-heavy language, and there's no getting out of that. That said, the workload isn't too bad: about 4 hours a week of outside study should be more than enough. It's really intimidating at first, but just push through during the first 2 weeks and study for the class.

In terms of course logistics, you will need THREE textbooks: the Textbook, the Workbook, and the CHARACTER Workbook. Homework is graded on effort, and in-class assignments are basically graded on effort, although if you repeat the same mistakes you will be docked points. You will have to pick either Simplified or Traditional and stick with it. Lecture and Discussion attendance are MANDATORY, but if you show up to them, they're free points. If you don't, you'll hurt your grade pretty badly. Also, as a heads up, lectures routinely go overtime, so keep that in mind when planning coursework

Quizzes form the bulk of your grade, and generally involve you transcribing what Yao Laoshi says into Chinese-both into characters and pinyin. They're graded very generously. Exams are actually decently difficult as they're purely written and you have to memorize many radicals, but they're not worth that much of your grade (like 30% total).

By the way, the cutoff for an A appears to range from 93 to 95%. 93% is reasonable, but 95% is actually much harder to get than it seems.

Basically, show up, care about the class, do your work (it's really clear what you're assigned to do), and you should do fine

-Yao laoshi is a nice person. She is super helpful during office hours as well as through email. It's quite tough for me to take a language course like this online. This class has no recordings and no slides uploaded for students. So for whoever not in the US, it will be hard to attend the class on time. Every lecture usually has an in-class assignment at the end. Quiz weekly, and an audio recording lecture every 2 weeks, workbook is due every Saturday.
-The cut-off grade for this class is quite high, so try your best.
- 3 books are needed for this class. So make sure you have them. 3rd edition will be find for the textbook and the character workbook.
- Overall, my experience with this course was mainly annoyed because it was online. The professor had tried her best to accommodate, as long as you communicated with her.

Really great professor! She's firm but also understanding. She makes every student go to her office hours at least once during the quarter. Weekly homework assignments, with recording assignments due every other week, and one final oral presentation. Weekly quizzes (she gives hints sometimes) during lecture. One midterm. Show up, memorize your characters/pinyin, and you'll do perfectly fine.

I really loved her class as my first quarter. If you go to the lecture, do your assignments and turn them in on time, you'll probably get an A, because participation and assignments take a large portion for overall grade scale. (Midterm and final only took 30 percentage).

Yao made this one of the best classes I took Fall Quarter. I came in with no experience in Chinese and she made it relatively easy to learn. The content becomes memorization after a while and there is no shortcut to that, but she does her best in class to be engaging and funny. She knew everyone's name in the class and even once had me go to her office hours to help me with pronunciation. She cares about your learning and that was evident from class. If you're interested in taking this class she's a great professor for chinese and as long as you put in the work you'll do fine (it's daunting at first).