HIND 1010

Griff Ji is an awesome professor and this is an amazing class! Its so surprising how much you can learn in a few months! You start at the basics and every two weeks you start a new unit with grammar and vocab. I came into this class with a little bit of background Hindi, and it is definitely useful for the pace of this class, but its not necessary. If you're a complete beginner, I would consider taking it with Nasir Ji because I've heard that he goes a bit slower. Homework consists of worksheets and writing sentences, which escalates to writing a paragraph towards the end of the semester. Griff Ji is very prompt with returning assignments and he circles your mistakes, which makes it super easy to make corrections and resubmit for grading. If you don't understand something or have a question on the homework, ask Griff Ji in class. He really wants his students to understand and do well so he'll answer questions and explain things in depth to make sure everybody understands by the end of class. All in all, do all the assignments and corrections, study for the quizzes, and ask questions to be successful! #tCF2020

Griff Ji is the best!!!! He’s so kind, understanding and funny and teaches Hindi so well, even through zoom! Griff Ji is one of the rare types of professors who genuinely cares about his students and wants to get to know them, definitely pop into his office hours and just chat with him! I feel like some people are hesitant to take this class because it’s every day and if they already don’t have any previous experience in hindi/urdu. Don’t let that stop you! The class may be every day but it goes by very fast and recently Griff Ji has cancelled Friday classes and instead assigned us to watch bollywood movies! And to address the no previous hindi/urdu experience part, trust me there were a few people in class this semester who couldn’t speak or read/write a single word of Hindi but picked up the language so quickly because of Griff Ji’s awesome teaching. The class itself is a bit fast paced but Griff Ji won’t test you unless he thinks you’re ready. Grades consist of daily homework, weekly journals, unit quizzes, midterm, final, participation and two small projects. The homework isn’t difficult and you are allowed to redo it if you get a bad grade. The quizzes are also not difficult as long as you understand the material. I feel like as long as you make an effort in this class it’s not hard to get an A. 11/10 would recommend this class!!

Griff Ji is a great professor! However, there's always those examples of teachers who like a teacher as a person, but not their teaching. More of the opposite for me. He's a great professor, but sometimes he'll get really interested in a topic you're really passionate about, but then he may not be interested in it later or may have just forgotten he was interested. However, he supports students who are really passionate about what they want to accomplish.

From a grading standpoint, he's pretty clear in the beginning of the first class of the semester while reviewing the syllabus that if you do the work, you'll get an A, but if you don't care or put effort, you'll get a C. Don't miss class a lot though! I didn't do well unfortunately because I missed a whole week and it made it really hard to recover due to the amount of work that got pilled up including having to learn the new material that everyone else was learning while I was catching up. If you go to his office hours, take advantage of them because he can really help you there. He also gives out his phone number so you can text him questions about Hindi that you need clarification about or general grammar questions. Only big problem I had was that he would assign homework and expect you to learn it from a grammar packet. After you do the homework, you have no clue if you even did the homework right and could risk a low score on the homework, but then he goes over it in class. Also, email him about your grades because he doesn't put them in Collab.

Chaussee is very intelligent, will throw lots of cool info at you in class; the problem is he'll throw lots of random info on grammar and vocab and expects you to go and study all of it every day... Daily assigned homework requires at least around an hour a day, which is a lot. The expectation is that if your taking the class, you legitimately want to become fully fluent in the language and are willing to commit to the immense demands that learning a new language requires. He's also very arrogant; when teaching he cares more about flaunting his knowledge of the material rather than putting it in a context that is actually helpful and understandable to the student paying his salary.

So I came into the class with the very little Hindi knowledge I knew from watching Bollywood movies and I found the class to be pretty easy /as long as/ I kept up with the pace of it. Chaussee is super nice with the way he grades and assigns homework and midterms (which are all very straightforward). He's also one of the best professors I've ever had. Don't fall behind, put in at least an hour of practice/studying everyday and you're good to go.

Don't be fooled by the rest of the classes in the South Asian study dept. Chausee is no Bimla ji or Geeta Patel. He expects you to know your stuff. Homework/ reading gets a bit overwhelming, and you get ~1-2hrs of homework each day (since we have class 4 days a week). Also, remember that you will be competing with people who already know this stuff in and out.

Difficult, but so worth. You will really learn the language and lots of other cool tidbits on the way. Put in lots of effort!

great class!

Pretty nice guy but he is arrogant. The class was pretty easy for me, but I knew some people really struggled. But, what you put in is what you'll get out.

chaussee cold calls on people, so it keeps you on your toes. don't expect any sympathy if you screw up. i like him a lot, just don't ask any questions that he thinks are stupid. funny guy though, very knowledgeable. i would definitely recommend it. not too much work, either.

Griff is pretty good at teaching and explaining things, but he comes off as cocky and arrogant at times. If you overlook that, then the class is enjoyable. Overall I had a positive experience.