JAPN 1010

Sato Sensei is great if you have never taken Japanese before. She is slightly easier than Marshall Sensei, but Marshall Sensei really makes you know your stuff. Don't be afraid to make mistakes in her class. She is also very helpful in office hours.

Don't take this course if you are interested in Japanese. This course is worse than learning by yourself for 3 reasons.

1) class is discussion based. You talk to people who actually have no clue about the language. You won't improve when everyone knows nothing about the language but are speaking in incomplete Japanese.
2) class has insane workload. You get two homeworks everyday and 3 quizzes every two weeks and 3 test a semester AND a final exam except for the quizzes everything is graded harshly.
3) Every course material are meant for you to study by yourself which means there are no lessons and if you can do that just study on your own don't take this course.
4) grades aren't transparent. You don't get to know what you got wrong on tests and you can't negotiate with the instructor.

I got an A- for this course but at the cost of losing interest in Japanese and being frustrated about grading.

This class is super work heavy. You have homework everyday, plus you have pre-lecture work to do as well. The schedule is pretty consistent, every lesson spanning 2 weeks, but it's still a lot and can easily become overwhelming if you're not on top of it. If you have a lot of other workload-heavy courses and can't dedicate at least an hour to homework and another hour to studying everyday, I wouldn't really recommend this course. It's still a fun course despite all that, and Sato-Sensei definitely cares and tries to help as much as she can. This course is very hard, but has a good pay off for all the hard work you put into it, just be wary about the workload and be prepared to dedicate a lot of time.