Chih-ping Sobelman

Take Elementary Chinese, or skip to Advanced Chinese. Do anything but take this class with "Su Tai Tai"! Su Tai Tai rarely corrected people if they mixed up their "zh- ch- sh-" with "z- c- s-" or if used a wrong tone for a character. Even worse, she spoke English more than half the time when teaching. So my Chinese regressed from listening to wrong pronunciations AND my English regressed from listening to Su Tai Tai's lilting, piercing ramblings. She also spends very little time actually teaching because she's too busy being passive-aggressive, going off on tangents, making inappropriate comments, lauding her pedagogy, etc. She likes to bring up Chinese regional differences, which is fine, except it would become "China does this... Taiwan does that" and then she would say "but let's not go there!" or "but we can't comment on this!" or "but we must be neutral!" You brought this up in the first place, Su Tai Tai. Some days, she's clearly grumpy, and her annoying, high-pitched, screeching voice would be tainted with a tangible impatience. More than once has a student complained about being scared of her. When someone says something "wrong," expect some snide comment. Or if the class is a bit slow in repeating in kindergarten-fashion after her, expect a loud, obnoxious, threatening "HELLO?! HELLO?! IS ANYONE THERE?!" Su Tai Tai also spends a good deal making "some people in this c…

i went into the class knowing sobelman had mood swings but thats not the worst part by far. she acts very nice and sometimes even cracks a joke or two, but when the grades come out...if she has a grudge against you then youre doomed. my final grade for the semester was a WHOLE LETTER GRADE short of what i had predicted (based on test/quiz results)...that is simply ridiculous. as a result i dropped out of her class the following semester. when i tried to confront her about this grave error she took a month to reply back to me, was late for our meeting (cutting it short to 10 min), and refused to change my grade. when asked if i could schedule another appointment with her she said "well of course you can. but i dont have time to talk to you because you arent my student anymore..."

Su tai tai, is a disgrace to the EALAC department. I have taken many courses within EALAC and I have to say, she is by far the worse professor I have ever had within EALAC. Her classes are SUPER DISORGANIZED-- which is the worse way it can be for a language class!!!! She is moody, moody, and very moody-- SO UNPROFESSIONAL. And she plays favorites quite blatantly. I think someone said that Su was a monster. She is. You will sit in class very frustrated because her demands are ridiculous. SHE HAS NO STRUCTURE. Don't take her, take Readings with another professor, or skip her altogether. What a shame...no wonder she is still only a lecturer after 35+ years of teaching at Columbia...

For starters, Sobelman is a highly disorganized teacher, if we are technically even supposed to give her that much credit. Bullying everyone to call her "Su-Tai-Tai" because she somehow feels unjustified in accepting the fact that she deserves no respectable title because she does not even own a Ph.D. and is teaching at one of the most prestigious universities in the nation, Sobelman is a egotistic freak. She loves to play favorites, mainly for those who are not native English speakers. She is highly unprofessional, in that she discusses politics when unnecessary or rude, bashes specific students to both her TA and her other "little favorites," and sticks her opinion into subjects no one cares about but herself. If she were smart, she would keep her derogative comments about certain individuals to herself, but unfortunately, she is not, and so students have a legitimate excuse to deride her in all sorts of ways. She is a shame to the EALAC department, considering that it is highly renowned and prestigious--one of the best in the nation. However, many students have lost total interest in the EALAC department because of Sobelman, because she is most certainly unrepresentative of the otherwise great department. I cannot stress enough, and I'm speaking for the majority of people who have taken her classes, that having her as a teacher is one of the worst mistakes one could make. A…

About Sobelman and making technology work against us: Sobelman prides herself on integrating technology with language learning... but the problem is she does not know how to work with computers and dabbling has only made things worse. Sobelman distributes class documents as hard copies in class, as attachments in e-mails and files on Courseworks with no particular coherent organization. This is kind of like a company paying its employees in cash, then in check, then in electronic deposit at random order. See the problem here? It's a pain to keep track of everything and vital information is easily overlooked. To exacerbate things, she also often sends the same e-mail twice, send the wrong e-mail, forget the attachment or attach a wrong file. However, what tops the cake is that for the first few weeks of class, the students had to actually help her how to access her files on the class computers. We would literally sit there and watch a student walk her through how to find a particular file in her cluttered inbox. One time, a document on a quiz on the next day was sent via e-mail on the night before the quiz instead of having been distributed in class on the previous session or posted on Courseworks in a timely manner. About Sobelman and NOT teaching Chinese in Chinese class: However, the biggest time-waster, and I estimate that at least 20% to 40% of total class hours was wasted…

moderate amount. you have your heavy days and you have your light days. expect about 3 hours for hw but 10 years to study for tests because she gives your 4 different vocab lists to study from...

Sobelman is becoming a stricter, more serious teacher, but of course, still very disorganized. There is a lot of busy work and the tests do not always cover information from class. Many practically fluent Mandarin speakers hide in this class, so students who have learned Mandarin at university/high school alone are at a disadvantage. I feel like I didn't learn very much in this class. Definitely geared towards native speakers.

I read the reviews on CULPA and decided to try the class anyway because I thought, "how bad could it be?" Well, I am confident that my level of Chinese has decreased this semester. I will NOT be taking this course next semester and I will NOT the only one in class who is doing so. If there was a "0" bubble to select to denote "horrible," then I would have selected it. To be fair, my level of Chinese would have decreased even more had I not taken this course, but that is like saying I would have starved even more had I not bought that bag of chips for $50. I am disappointed in both myself for not heeding the warnings I read about Sobelman and in Columbia for offering such a poor course. Seriously, a Chinese professor from the Math Department can probably teach Chinese better, or at least less painfully.

You'll either love her or hate her. The first thing that you'll notice on the first day of class is that she speaks more English than she does Chinese, which is somewhat disappointing. Also be ready for an untraditional syllabus that seems to flutter and sputter at the whim of how the professor is feeling that day. Personally, I did not learn as much as I thought I could have in this class. Also be prepared for students of all calibers (from those straight off the boat from Shanghai trying to get that easy A to non-native speakers struggling to get by) and little accomodation for the non-experts. Also, be prepared for the professor's wild mood swings. Or, hey, that might be your source of entertainment for the sememster.

This lady talks a lot, and it's repetitive. Classtime is painful and feels awfully wasteful because all she does is have the class read aloud the textbook and repeat after her - at a level which "native-speaking students" should have already mastered, and the ones who haven't yet, can learn from the pin yin. Her quizzes are very easy and straight from the book and her supplement. She is a very dedicated teacher in spite of it all, and she always sends you back your composition the same day if you write it on the computer, (sometimes even at 3 AM in the morning!) She has a lot of ideas for teaching and is really into her own system of pedagogy, as you will find in her first two classes, which are NOTHING but rants about her own pedagogical philosophy - don't let her fool you in the first two classes: she may be your "Coach," your "Su Tai Tai," but in class, she is the itch below your diaphragm that makes you sputter and suffocate.