Take this class! I loved it so much. The work load is reasonable (three essays over the course of the quarter) and the material taught is so important and applicable, regardless of your major. Professor Stone is knowledgable, helpful, witty, and just a cool dude overall. He really wants to help you improve your writing skills. If you have specific questions about your own writing, he'll talk to you one-on-one in class or in his office hours - he really takes the time to help you understand where you can improve.

Let me just start off by saying this: if you have the opportunity to take ANY class from Bruce Stone, do it. He is just incredible, and it will surely become one of your favorite classes. He is epic.

Bruce Stone is extremely intelligent and understanding, and I am very thankful to have had such an incredible professor for my first quarter. His grading is fair, and he very much pushed me to improve my writing skills. He does an incredible job preparing students for all three essays, and his conferences offer a perfect time to get one-on-one help with specific assignments. His lectures are fun and interesting, and you should try to participate as much as possible- trust me, it's worth it! In high school, it may have been easy for everyone to pull off an essay by turning in mediocre work to get a good grade, but you will have to work harder in this class, and I promise that it will only benefit you in the end. In the 10 weeks I had this class, my writing skills drastically improved; his goal is to help undergrads become the best writers possible, and I can tell he is very successful at that. Many of my friends that haven't taken Eng Comp 3 have already heard about Stone from me and his other students, his classes are going to start filling up! Do yourself a favor and take his class, you will truly enjoy Stone, as a professor AND person, and benefit from his teaching style.

Professor Stone is overall a reasonable and chill professor and what he mainly wants is to see the effort that you put into writing. I liked how passionate and dedicated to writing he is but it is fair to say that he doesn't give the clearest formula for writing a paper (since he's against the idea of a formula anyway) so it might be a little difficult for beginning writers. The workload for this class is quite manageable and I'm pretty sure Stone is one of the best Engcomp 3 teachers out there, who don't grade harshly or too subjectively.

Bruce did help me to improve my analytical writing skills, but he is a pretty tough grader and it is very, very, very difficult to receive an A on any of the papers unless you are willing to put in some grueling hours. Participation is also very important to Bruce, so I suggest that you sit at the front if possible, keep up with readings, and try to speak at least twice per class meeting because it will affect your grade if you do not participate. Overall, I really enjoyed Bruce but this class was definitely not an easy A.

Do not take this class

Professor Stone is clearly an amazing writer and cares about the subject so much that he would marry it if he could (e.g. he calls good sentences "delicious"). He clearly cares about his students (he went out of his way to try to learn everyone's names by week 2). However, this class is definitely not a piece of cake and Professor Stone holds everyone to a high expectation and grades pretty harshly on the essays (we had 3 essays). For the sample paper, he was borderline A-/B+ but ended up giving the person a B+ because she had the wrong citation. Make sure you have the correct citation!!! Also go into office hours early when drafting your essays because a lot of other students will be there as well. The reading is not heavy at all; the workload is mainly in writing the essays. My writing abilities improved drastically with Professor Stone; however, I think his class was harder than an EngComp class normally should be.

Very difficult class to get an A in, he grades super tough. NOT WORTH taking the class unless you really, really want to become a better writer... which I did not want as a freshman fall quarter.

Prof. Stone is helpful depending on the situation. When having a 1 on 1 zoom meeting he is 4/5 helpful. In zoom lectures, around a 3/5 on helpfulness if you can pay attention. Most of the homework seems easy, but in reality, a bit hard and could take well over an hour. Overall, a good professor.

Bruce Stone is an excellent writing teacher – plain and simple.

If you care about becoming a better writer, take his class! More than any other class I've taken at UCLA, Stone's ENG COMP 3 class has demonstrably improved my analytical reading and writing skills.

If you are looking for an "easy A", look elsewhere – Stone is an honest grader, not an easy grader. Nevertheless, if you demonstrate genuine effort and respond to feedback, there is no reason you can't get an A in this class.

Professor Stone is definitely a tough grader, but he will make your writing improve!

It's not an easy A, but the reading is really interesting and like I said, your writing level will jump to the college level. Great class to take with wonderful discussions. Will definitely help you in your future college writing classes!