Barbara Spinelli

Spinelli is a gem. So funny, so kind, so encouraging. She has high expectations for her students (she would give you a "you can do better than this" look if you scored lower than a 95 on a quiz), but she gives great feedback and is always willing to help (answers emails super fast, always willing to meet). The course takes a lot of effort, but you do learn very quickly.

I really recommend this class!!! Professor Spinelli is the sweetest professor ever! the class is super chill and no homework. maximum is like one page of reading or watching a YouTube video ... never more than like 10 minutes per homework and you never need to submit it on coursework. we just talk about it in class. the content is soooo interesting: discussing the history or Italy, to political dilemmas, art history, italian in nyc, our own backgrounds and many more discussions. the class environment is so nice and supportive, she helps and is nice when we make mistakes. the best class ever!! there are two presentations, one as a midterm and one as a final about a topic of our choice. it just has to relate to a bigger overarching theme she decides on but is super flexible. 5-7 minute long presentations. I think the entire class has an A! this class has improved my confidence when speaking italian by a lot and I really really enjoy it. Take it!!!

Reading through these other reviews, I feel that I am living in an alternate universe. I am very happy that others had a good experience with Barbara SpinelliÂ’s class, but I simply canÂ’t echo the sentiment. Her teaching style (as well as her personality) is very concrete. I found her classroom exercises mind-numbingly repetitive--sometimes she literally transcribed the textbook onto the blackboard--but I suppose repetition does help. I was just hoping for repetition and expansion. That said, it was obvious from day one that teaching this class was the least of her concerns. I say this because I had a problem finding her during office hours and she did not respond to e-mails I sent to clarify assignments. I found her to be the least accessible instructor I have had at Columbia. We had barely any homework for a six-credit course, and most people simply copied the answer keys into the workbook to get an A. The occasional short compositions were rarely handed back before the next one was due, and that was usually a full month later. Again, obviously grading our extremely minimal homework seemed to be the least of her concerns. If I were a person who wanted to speed up the language requirement, get six credits of pathetically easy A, and not learn much more than the book already told me, I would have loved this class. However, I have a genuine interest in learning this language a…

Really healthy learning environment. 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Fall 2023 Course: ITALUN1102_001_2023_3-ELEMENTARYITALIANII : ITALUN1102_001_2023_3 - ELEMENTARY ITALIAN II Instructor: Felice Beneduce

Drop whatever you are doing and take a course with Barbara Spinelli. I'm so serious. This woman is an actual angel. I have taken intensive elementary and intermediate conversation with her and she is by far the best professor I have had at Columbia. She is so kind and funny, but also very dedicated to her students and is very knowledgable about how the brain learns language. She is also excellent at creating a warm atmosphere for her students and there is a strong sense of community by the end of the semester. That said, an intensive language course is not for the weak! There's a reason this course is 6 credits: it's 6 hours a week, there are weekly quizzes, there's homework throughout the week (and on weekends), and the pace of instruction in class is very quick. If you are not passionate about languages or you don't have any previous experience with a romance language, I would not recommend this class to you, but if you're like me and love learning languages and/or have experience with a romance language (I had years of experience with Spanish coming into this class) I would 100%, hands down, recommend this course. If I could go back and take this course again, I 1000% would. I am honestly sad that I've taken all of the courses Prof. Spinelli offers and won't get to be in her classroom anymore.

Barbara is an amazing professor. She is funny, helpful, and genuinely interested in her students. This was the first time I had ever taken an Italian class and I learned so much. She is a very generous grader and makes the material fun and enjoyable to learn. I couldn't ask for more in a foreign language professor.

I would recommend this course for anyone who is interested in learning Italian. The instructor wants the students to succeed and creates an environment where every student can do so. 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Fall 2023 Course: ITALUN1102_002_2023_3-ELEMENTARYITALIANII : ITALUN1102_002_2023_3 - ELEMENTARY ITALIAN II Instructor: Felice Beneduce

Barbara is an amazing instructor! She is engaging, funny, kind and will make your learning experience so enjoyable. She does a great job at teaching the language and includes a fair amount of cultural context (which I value a lot in language classes). My only criticism is that the course can feel at times a little disorganized, in terms of the workload. There's regular homework that's collected at the end of the week but there are sometimes extra exercises that you'll need to keep track of. If you want to learn Italian, you won't regret taking this class!

Professoressa Spinelli was without a doubt the best teacher I have had at Columbia. She was entertaining, dedicated, and absolutely the most helpful person I ever met. I am amazed at how much Italian I learned in one semester with her. I assure you that if you're debating over whether to take the intensive class or the regular ones and are discouraged by the amount of presumed work in the intensive class, you should not let it worry you - Prof. Spinelli will pull you through it. She is a gold-star caliber teacher if I ever met one. There is not enough I could say about her style and her true caring for all of her students.

Barbara Spinelli is the best damn professor at Columbia. She's the kind of person who is genuinely interested in what you want to do with your life, what your favorite movie is and why, what your family's like, and your personal story of how you came to Columbia. You feel less like a student and more like a person who gets to practice speaking Italian with your older, much smarter friend. You don't even have to go to office hours to develop a close relationship with her because her class is extremely conversational and interactive. Despite being so friendly, she is extremely well-qualified as an educator and directs the entire Italian language program. Our class runs on schedule and covers a ton of material each week. You will have to pay attention and study vocab that you don't know. If you accidentally skip an assignment, she will let you turn it in late for full credit, probably because she actually wants you to do well in the class. Her grading is very fair and she will gently call you out in class for missing something simple that you should already know. At the beginning of the semester, I knew zero Italian, but by the end, I felt like I could talk fluently in six different verb tenses about literally any topic without stuttering or freezing up. Honestly, attending her class is the best part of my day. It's never boring and mainly consists of answering questions out loud…