SPAN 4202

This class was the hardest Spanish class I've ever taken. The grade was made up entirely of 4 essays- 3 were timed 1.5 hour midterms and the last was a 4-5 page paper with textual evidence that we had a few days to write as a final. The prompts on the first two midterms did not relate at all to the main content we had learned in class. Prof. Velazquez was a very hard grader and took off a lot of points for small issues. He also did not give very constructive feedback when asked about the points off which was frustrating. The class itself was interesting but I didn't end up doing 90% of the reading because the readings were usually 25+ pages a night and he would end up summarizing them in class and providing "resumenes" of everything we had gone over including the readings. There was a lot of repetition in the class and the same studies were used to demonstrate different phenomena during the semester, so that made it easier. Prof. Velazquez also loves to cold call on people. Overall, the class content was interesting but the readings and exams were definitely 4000 level. Would not recommend unless you have no other choice for your linguistics credit.

I really wanted to like this class because I do genuinely find the material interesting, but I didn't like it because of the way it was taught. The lectures are all over the place and hard to follow, and the professor comes across as intimidating. He is very playful and jokes around with the students, but it was often a weird environment overall. The material itself is interesting, but the text is boring and the lectures were often very confusing, and I usually barely knew what was going on. The exams are on specific topics that you write a short essay on so they are impossible to study for and easy to do poorly on if you don't know about that specific topic. There is a final research paper and a presentation on it and he stresses that he takes and grades them very seriously, which is definitely stressful. Overall, I personally wouldn't want to do this class over again so I can't say I recommend it, but I also definitely understand how other students could have had a completely different experience with the class!