Honestly I wasn't a big fan of Asian American studies, but Dr. Tamai is really sweet and does a good job lecturing overall! She really cares for her students and is extremely mindful of the COVID situation. I took this class as a GE, and the workload was relatively light. The grade was based on a final exam, term paper, discussion participation, and film responses (no midterm during COVID). There was a lot of reading assigned for this class, but to be honest I was able to get by without doing most of it (however, if you're interested in asian am studies/have the time, definitely take the time to read!). The grading for the final and term paper were fairly lenient, so I wouldn't worry too much about those. Overall, if you're looking for a fairly chill GE and have an interest in asian american studies, take this class!

This class was amazing. Professor Tamai-Welty is just brilliant. You can tell she really understands and loves the material. Even though I got an A- I am so grateful I was able to take this class. It was so refreshing to learn about my culture and other Asian cultures, especially since this course is contemporary Asian America. The readings were a lot usually but I enjoyed reading because I enjoyed the subject. Professor Tamai-Welty goes over all the concepts in lecture anyways. The only complaint I have about this course is that I never saw anything inputted into myUCLA grades. I just received my final grade but I never saw my final exam grade, final paper grade, discussion section grade, etc.

Professor Welty’s lectures are very engaging and generally include a few film clips in betweeen so that you won’t need to take notes all the time. No one did tok terrible on midterm and final, as the questions are not so hard as long as you don’t answer them without any studying. However, there are 3 things to note:

1. Welty NEVER post her lecture slides online, so if you want to ditch a lecture, you should have a very good reason to conpensate.

2. For those of you with an international background, especially those who come to US for college, DO NOT mistake this class as an easy GE. According to one of my international friends who is also in the class, the readings are going to be challenging and time-consuming, and if you are not serious enough studying for the tests, you will get 60s or even fail while watching the rest of the class getting high 80s, 90s, or even 100.

3. Speaking of the readings, DO NOT read every word. Skimming the intro and conclusion paragraph and then read the first sentence are generally enough for you to understand the big ideas.

I hope the information above can help you decide whether to take the class as a GE and how to do well in it.

Professor Welty is a great lecturer, and this class was overall very easy, but there is a LOT of readings assigned each week and you must resist developing a habit of skipping them while focusing on your other major related courses.
There is one group presentation during discussion and one research paper that you have to write but the grading is pretty lenient.
The students get to choose what will be on the midterm and final (in class they just ask us to shout out various vocab words and topics).
Midterm contains about 2-3 identification questions which is a brief paragraph response for each ID, and then an essay prompt where you choose 1 out of 4 prompts.
Final has roughly the same structure, except there's a couple more ID questions.
Attendance is crucial. Lectures are not podcasted and her slides are not posted online, and if you skip a discussion section, they'll deduct 3% of your overall grade at the end of the quarter, and for each additional section you skip, they'll raise the percentage to powers of 3 (2nd offense: 9%, 3rd offense: 27%, etc)

This is not a hard writing class. Lecture is quite interesting. Lots of reading materials were assigned every week but I didn't read them all. There are three writing projects. I don't think the writing projects are based on the assigned reading since we can search online to have better understanding on the topic we want to write. As an international student, I made many grammar mistakes but what's more important is the thesis of an essay. Talking to TA about the thesis is the best way to get good score on writing projects. You need to writing another essay in 3 hours for the final, and it is not that hard.

Is this the easiest GE ever? No. But is it really interesting and well worth your time? Yes!!

I genuinely enjoyed every lecture -- she really knows how to keep you engaged and all the content is interesting to begin with. However, there is an essay that you work on for the whole quarter, and the midterm and final have in class essays. If you're not a fan of timed essays, maybe this class isn't for you. The essays are not hard at all though.

Dr. Welty Tamai is a wonderful professor and lecturer. She is clearly passionate and enthusiastic about what she's teaching and truly wants everyone to succeed. The class entails a ton of outside reading, but the class itself wasn't difficult at all and was quite enjoyable. There are three essays (one smaller one and two longer ones) as well as discussion presentations, so it's a bit work-intensive at times (but completely doable!). If you need a social analysis GE or Writing II, definitely try to take this class.

This class is pretty heavy with readings and material, in addition to the writing requirement of 20 pages for Writing II. BUT Professor Tamai makes all of the time worth it! She is the nicest professor I have ever had and really wants to help and connect with students. She gives lots of comments and feedback on essays that REALLY improve your writing skills in a couple weeks/papers. Overall, she really made the class enjoyable and the class was full of interesting material. :)

This class is a Writing II course condensed into 6 weeks, which means you'd have to write a lot of papers. Your grade consists of 3 papers, a creative project, film worksheets, participation, attendance, and a final. There were 3 papers and your paper grade would be on the draft (20%) and revision (80%). The class has a lot of readings, so do not fall behind. As long as you put effort and work into your papers and pay attention to the professor's comments on your drafts and going to the writing center, you could get a good grade. While Dr. Welty-Tamai is a little bit of a harsh grader, be sure to go to office hours or set up an appointment to talk about your papers because she's super nice and cares a lot about student learning! I wouldn't say that this is the easiest class, but as long as you put the effort and are interested in the topic, you should be good. Lecture was always engaging and fun, so I'm glad that I took the course since I learned a lot about Asian Am lit and culture!!

I am so glad I had Professor Tamai for my first quarter. She was extremely nice and accommodating. Throughout lecture you could see how engrossed with the material she was displaying empathy and energy while she lectured. Every week we would learn about a new community. Because of COVID Professor dropped the midterm so we only had a paper and a final to do. A paper was the main assignment for the class, where you were graded on having an outline, a draft, and the final product. Discussion sections were structured differently where you had to sign up to be the week's leader. The leader would have to read all the readings and summarize/teach them to the group for the week. You'd be put in groups and your written summary would be graded. Along with that you'd have film questions to answer for a film assigned every now and then. The readings assigned weren't terrible but I do recommend getting familiar with a few of them since the final is a timed essay. Overall a great environment Professor has created and would recommend to others.