Alma Mora

Although nice and well-intentioned, her ineffective teaching in Intermediate I may be the sole reason I am struggling so hard in Intermediate II. Sure, "what you put in is what you get out of it" but I was never quite sure why learning all of the grammar - which is arguably the hardest part of learning the spanish language - was expected to be done outside the classroom. I learned most of my spanish for the year with the lovely tutors in the ARC. I hate to say it because she was so nice, but look elsewhere. Your grade and personal enjoyment in class with thank you for it later.

Professor Mora is very sweet and funny. She wants her students to not only learn Spanish, but also about Spain and Latin America. The class is pretty easy, and if you do your work and participate in class she'll like you. There aren't tests or quizzes other than the midterm and final. The only real homework you have to do is on MySpanishLab. Each semester you watch about three movies which I really enjoyed. There's an essay for each movie and Mora gives clear feedback. She has a big project each semester and that can be really stressful, especially in comparison to the lack of work you have before the project. However, if you stay on top of your game and do assignments for the project early then it's not too bad. One thing I will say is that learning Spanish in college is completely different than in high school. There is no longer an emphasis on learning vocab, and you're expected to learn grammar a lot faster. I'm someone who always struggled learning languages and hated Spanish class but this ended up being my one of my best classes and actually got me interested in learning Spanish to learn more about the Spanish speaking world.

Alma Mora is the sweetest lady, and I definitely recommend her as a professor. I do agree that most of the time I have no idea what she is saying or what's going on, but I think that's how it is in the Spanish department in general. It's the teaching method. Professor Mora barely gives any homework, and I find it to be an incredibly light load. You can skimp if you want; a lot of stuff is not graded, she just wants you to look over the material that will be covered in the next class. Professor Mora is also an easy grader; I was able to put in minimal effort and get A's. If you put in an effort to make is seem like you really care and really want to do well, Professor Mora is very receptive to that. Go to office hours a few times. Participate in class. Ask questions. It's easy. As for the classes themselves, very little material was covered, and they are quite easy compared to part II of each.

Oh my gosh no no no no. STAY AWAY. All these other reviews say she is very nice lady and honestly she is pretty normal. I would not describe her as particularly kind but she laughs a lot most of the time no one knows why. She assigns A LARGE QUANTITY of homework, pages from the workbook at least after every class and a lot of packets. Many grammar book and myspanish assignments and we had to watch 3 movies and do lots of work for each one with very little time to do so. The final project was absurd and required research, mini compositions, a wiki page, and 2 videos, one interviewing a chef that had to cook food in a restaurant that pertained to the assigned country (some people were given countries like Uruguay or Bolivia so it was near impossible) and another video of you "talking naturally" is Spanish in a restaurant and you had to order a dish that pertained to your assigned country and do additional research on it. I repeat STAY AWAY. This would maybe be worth it if I learned a lot but I did not, she does not teach well and I regressed in knowledge if anything. GET OUT NOW

Professora Mora is an excellent professor. This is my fourth semester of Spanish, and I have had her for the last two. She couldn't be more helpful, professional and kind. She never embarrasses students in class by putting them on the spot. Prof Mora does some correcting, but does not demand perfection when we speak in class, and the reduction of that anxiety for her students facilitates cognitive ability to learn- at least for me it does. There energy in class is positive. She has a sense of humor about life, and gives lessons tailored to areas in which the class is weak and needs extra instruction. Many students who had her last semester registered for her classes again this semester. Departmental suggestions: 1) Gramatica Básica is great, especially the humorous bits! 2) The Spanish text book is not great. 3) MSL needs to give more and better feed back for incorrect answers. 4) WIKI technology needs to be updated to the 21st century. 5) Grad students who are inexperienced teachers should not teach classes. Overall, excellent Spanish program, and I recommend Professora Mora.

She's really nice, but a little crazy. I was anxious about taking a language, but the fact of the matter is she's always behind schedule and that works to your benefit in terms of workload, not Spanish learning. She really tried to foster a stress-free environment and emphasized conversation in class every day, and I would say she succeeded. Grammar was secondary to conversation, which was made abundantly clear the last week when she tried to teach us three tenses in two days.I'm heading into comprehensive intermediate now, and I'm a little nervous, though not so much about speaking - but actually knowing enough grammar/vocab.

Mora is a very, very nice person. She often extends deadlines for students if they forget something or if something goes wrong on a project. However, she does assign a LOT of work. I had more work for this class than any other class- and this class wasn't a part of my major and just a requirement! She is very sweet but she's not a great teacher. She sometimes struggled to explain certain concepts in English as she's a native Spanish speaker. The course was manageable but expect to spend a LOT of time doing work for her.

three essays, midterm + final, final project

Workbook pages (no more than 10) every few weeks Three essays (around 200 words or so) Midterm Oral Final Written Final

I think she sucks . . . Don't take her!! Uninteresting, can't explain concepts at all (in spanish or in english), plus she assigns a lot of work. She scribbles her own "code" as feedback on each of the essays you turn in, and gives you a sheet that explains what each code means, which isn't helpful at all. By all means avoide this professor