GERMAN 1
Elementary German
Description: Lecture, five hours; laboratory, one hour. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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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 - German 1 with Kyle was a wonderful experience. Kyle has a humorous personality and his lectures are engaging. The midterm and final were really straightforward, and the examinations take questions from the same question bank as the practice quiz. There are a few writing assignments as well, so be sure to know your basic sentence structures and grammar. The current learning platform for the textbook and homework, Blink Learning, is mediocre, so expect occasional tech issues. However, the homework is graded on completion/effort and not accuracy, so do not be unsettled when Blink Learning dumps arbitrary numbers on each homework page for the "grade". The final part of the course is reading the book "Akim Rennt", and by the time you get to week 10, you should be able to understand the general meaning of the content in the book. We read it together as a class, so that was very helpful. I would definitely take another German course with Kyle again.
Fall 2021 - German 1 with Kyle was a wonderful experience. Kyle has a humorous personality and his lectures are engaging. The midterm and final were really straightforward, and the examinations take questions from the same question bank as the practice quiz. There are a few writing assignments as well, so be sure to know your basic sentence structures and grammar. The current learning platform for the textbook and homework, Blink Learning, is mediocre, so expect occasional tech issues. However, the homework is graded on completion/effort and not accuracy, so do not be unsettled when Blink Learning dumps arbitrary numbers on each homework page for the "grade". The final part of the course is reading the book "Akim Rennt", and by the time you get to week 10, you should be able to understand the general meaning of the content in the book. We read it together as a class, so that was very helpful. I would definitely take another German course with Kyle again.
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