This class is not easy, Randy expects a lot from you but honestly it was my favorite class first quarter freshman year. He makes sure to make the class relevant, like instead of analyzing old books or whatever we wrote one essay on a black mirror episode and one on an environmental documentary. It was a lot of work but I didn't feel like it was a waste of time and I honestly enjoyed it. He really cares about his students and will give you pretty much as much time/help as you want, which is pretty uncommon among UCLA professors. I would recommend this class

Originally, as an international student, I am extremely afraid of writing. However, after this class, I love writing so much! He makes the class very interesting by introducing you interesting questions. There are three required essays, which are Black Mirror episode analysis, documentary analysis and Grammar B, which I like the most. He wrote his own book Own Your Perspectives and taught us how to incorporate our own perspectives into writing. And Grammar B is a truly free space for you to express your creativity. He always encourages students to write and to think. He likes to share his own lifestyle in class, which makes this class more interactive, and those life stories are also funny. The workload is doable. It is not that easy because you still need to revise again and again to improve your score. But he provides the one-on-one session as well as class publication in order to let you revise your essay from multiple angles. Go to the office hour earlier and begin revising earlier! He really opens up my mind and I would like to think more about the world around me!

This teacher really made an effort to form relationships with students and he was very welcoming if we needed help on our essays. I thought that I learned a lot from this class and improved in my writing because of the teacher. the workload was manageable with only 2 essays and 1 essay that is credit or no credit. He always told us our temporary grade on the essay and what we could improve on. The topics were also very interesting because one essay was on climate change documentary and the other was on something in our personal environment. I am a premed major so was a bit afraid of taking a writing class but the class was super interesting, manageable, and if I had to take a writing class I would take this class again.

Not going to lie, real great dude and professor. If you're decent at English, you should be totally fine in his class. Participation is a big deal though! Also, he gives many more opportunities to meet with him about your writing than other professors would. Strongly recommend!

Excellent professor who makes writing fun

I liked Professor Fallows a lot! He cracks a lot of jokes in class, and since class sizes are small participation really matters. Grades are based on three super straightforward three page essays you write throughout the quarter. Then, for your final essay, you choose two of those essays and expand them to six page essays. He takes time to meet with everybody throughout class and you get a lot of freedom when you write! Like, he let me curse and make bad jokes in my essay. Absolutely try to get Fallows, he actually made me enjoy writing! (And then I took a writing 2 class and got my confidence crushed right afterwards...)

loved engcomp3 with randy! he's super funny and even as a stem major i was always excited to come to class. for fall 2021 we wrote 2 essays, which was 80% of your grade, and participation which counted for 20%. one essay was based on a documentary about an environmental issue(you choose), and the other was very freeform. other work in the class included annotating the ~$20 textbook he wrote w/ his wife, which was work that was not graded but super helpful when it came to writing the actual essays. if you want a good grade, randy will tell you exactly what he wants and gives lots of tips and suggestions on how to improve your essays. he holds one on one meetings for both essays and is also available during office hours for more feedback. you have the entire quarter to work on the essays and they are due at the end of week 10. only thing is i wish he gave us a grade breakdown instead of just a single letter grade in myucla. would have loved to know what i got on each essay. overall, randy is a great professor who actually taught me something about writing and i would 1000% take a class with him again.

Love Randy!! To preface: there's only two six pages essays due the entire quarter. Seems easy, but to polish and make them truly good essays takes creativity, work, research, collaboration, and help from Randy himself. Luckily, he's a fantastic writer, and he gives plenty of times and opportunities to help you get there. More than just grammar or writing structure, this class really teaches you the fundamentals of how to be an effective writer for life, so much more than any high school class has for me. Would definitely recommend if you want to improve your writing skills, and are willing to put in a little bit of effort to get there.

As an incoming freshman, this was a great introduction to college writing for me. The textbook was appropriately priced and it was really insightful, too. We practiced how to break out of the mold of our impersonal academic writing styles and experimented with personal voice to make our writing more compelling and individualized. Fallows is a super cool, funny and friendly professor who will radically change the way you write for the better. Grading consists of 20% participation in class discussions/homework and 80% of your essays (or writing projects (WP)). WP1 is analysis of a political ad, WP2 is about an environmental documentary and WP3 is a "grammar b" essay about something personal—you first write 3 pages of each, then you expand two of those to 6 pages to be graded (one of WP1/WP2, + WP3). Fallows selects some students to be publishers each time, which means the class as a whole will read your writing. This may sound daunting but it's actually a great opportunity to get some valuable feedback from both the professor and your peers, so make sure to take notes. There are some weekly readings posted on CCLE which you have to post reading responses on, but it's nothing too crazy. Overall, I really enjoyed taking this class with Fallows and I would highly recommend this professor.

Aside from being a great teacher Randy is a very well-rounded person who has bold stances and views about life. As he teaches writing with examples from his personal life, you slowly get to know him and his values which was one of the things that made the class enjoyable for me. His class is really well organized. Overall, it’s about breaking the rules about writing that are taught in high school such as “don’t use the word I” “Start with a topic sentence”… etc. The class is about finding your voice and writing in a unique way by letting go of the fix things you’ve been told to do. He really teaches to write in an advanced way. He also explained, in the last class of the quarter, the broader significance of all the essays he assigned which made me appreciate this class more. The first essay was about an analysis of a black mirror episode that we picked. We were supposed to think about how it applied to us and generally write about ourselves instead of trying to write a boring objective paper. The second essay was about an environmental documentary that we chose. And the last one was about anything we wanted but we used a special writing style called Grammer B which is a very unusual, creative, funky style. He explained that he assigned these and never gave exams because he thought that schools were supposed to teach and value critical thinking abilities about information that can be found online instead of expecting students to memorize that knowledge that they could easily find with a click on their phone whenever they wanted. His goal was to prepare students to be able to think about the problems that they will face when they are adults and articulately express their ideas on those topics. Our generation’s problems are going to be environmental because we’re killing our planet and technological with all the advancements that are on the verge of causing ethical and moral dilemmas. This class really made me think about all these things and find my view on these topics. Which I believe is a very important quality to have as a person. This class will help students have views and be able to express them instead of being plant-like superficial people who don’t really think or have an opinion. The workload is not super light since for each essay a 3 page first draft, and for 2 essays (grammar b + the one that you pick from the other two) 6 page final drafts are required. (Double spaced) (Randy makes face to face appointments and discusses your essay with you as he reads it and gives advice) If you take this class you will be doing a good amount of writing and editing and you will have to work on the same Essay for a long time but that’s what helped me really get something out of this class and learn. It wasn’t easy and it may be hard for people who don’t like writing but I recommend taking this class to everyone because Randy is a great teacher and a great human being who’s definitely worth meeting. You will have your eyes opened after this class if you really try to take in what he’s teaching instead of just trying to satisfy the requirement and pass. If that’s your plan, then just take another EngComp class.