Diana Romero

Amazing prof, super caring, knowledgeable, and really pushes her students to succeed and improve upon their spanish! Def would recommend

Do not take this class if you have to take Elementary Heritage Spanish. This class was the worst experience I have had as a student. People were dropping the class after midterms. She is super strict. You can not miss any days unless it is for religious reasons. Even if you have a doctor's note or you come to class but have to leave before the end of class, she will mark you absent. She has her favorites and her grading criteria is not uniform. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

TAKE BACK MY POSITIVE REVIEW -- DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. You will be so unprepared for Intermediate I!!!! Romero will not teach you the appropriate grammar.

When you first take this class, you are going to think that it is the end of the world, because, I admit, Romero is difficult to understand before you get used to her, and, as some of the other reviews have pointed to, her assignments can often be confusing. However, I still learned a lot in this class and I genuinely really like her and she cares so much about her students. Much more than the average professor does. So, in short, I'd recommend it. Take the class and put in the effort, it is for sure worth the time.

I had read the overwhelmingly poor reviews of Professor Romero before taking Spanish 1120 but decided to go forward anyways- best decision. I'm so surprised at the amount of hate. First of all, she is generally one of the sweetest people and every single class it is so obvious how much enthusiasm she has for teaching and helping to improve the skills of aspiring Spanish speakers. Second, while she may not be the best technologically or as organized as perhaps some other professors, she tries her best and if you are able to look past these minuscule details, you will see that her interactive methods of teaching are truly invaluable. I took this class having had no formal education in Spanish, but knowing some French and speaking some other non-romance languages. In just one semester I have learned so much, and it didn't even for one moment feel overwhelming. I can now watch videos or Netflix shows in Spanish with Spanish subtitles and understand 80% of the dialogue. Simply being exposed to her speaking Spanish, even though you may not understand everything at first, will do wonders for your comprehension. Instead of being led by baby steps through the beginning, being immediately forced to navigate a faster paced class actually forces you to adjust and in my opinion pick the language up faster. Prof Romero does this in a spectacular way, she doesn't speak too fast, uses common…

I want to bring back the positive reviews! Contrary to the previous reviews, I found Prof. Romero to be extremely enthusiastic and thorough in this class. She had structured lectures, covered material at a quick pace (as is expected in a comprehensive class) but always answered all questions and was patient about reviewing grammatical terms. Her lectures had a good mix of interactive conversations/ activities and more formal explanations. The grading seemed very fair, although I find it absurd (in this department in general) that we must write our answers to the "Gramatica Basica" activities *in* the book itself, and this seems like a weirdly classist requirement. Aside from that, I really enjoyed her class and her teaching style. I definitely had an advantage in that I learned Spanish through immersion, so my speaking and listening are pretty strong especially compared to my reading/ writing. This made the fast pace of the class the perfect speed. I should definitely emphasize though that those who did the best in this class took it not to fulfill language requirements, but because they truly want to learn Spanish and improve their skills.

I don't know who the person is being reviewed here, but my class, and friends in other classes taught by her, will attest that she is an awful teacher and one who has made our lives significantly worse. Putting positive reviews about her does a disservice to the Columbia community. The workload is immense and her whim is arbitrary. She goes by the textbook and can sometimes make class interesting, but more often makes it needlessly complicated by introducing tasks that have nothing to do with actually learning Spanish. This goes double for homework, where she is inflexible and Much of class is spent partnered into various groups of two or three with her yelling at us whenever we finished early because she was that anxious about us not slacking off. There was not a moment where we didn't feel judged, and judged poorly at that. All in all, this class is something that neither I nor my classmates would wish on anyone.

I grew up in a Spanish-speaking household, but had limited formal instruction in Spanish. If this sounds like your situation, and you want to learn to write and speak well in Spanish take this course. Prof. Romero put a lot of effort into the course, partnering with the University of Arizona to create a Wiki where we spoke to penpals and uploaded our essays. Prof. Romero similarly demanded a lot of effort on the part of the students, asking us to research a Latino neighborhood in NYC, visit the neighborhood and interview residents, write informative and narrative essays, upload videos and photos onto the class Wiki, and make a presentation about our project. Although this seems like a lot of work, the tasks built on each other so that the research paper on the neighborhood helped you write the following essays. I enjoyed the opportunity to visit a neighborhood and speak to my classmates about their projects. Ultimately, the course is what you make of it. I took the opportunity to speak in class and write and re-write drafts and now find that I am much more comfortable writing and speaking in Spanish. This course is much more than an intensive grammar review-- if you are looking purely for grammatical instruction, take another course.

Don't do it to yourself. She gives ridiculous amounts of homework - which you won't finish in time if you have any other classes on your schedule. Then, to make matters worse, she calls on you when she just KNOWS you don't have that question done. I came in thinking that a 5 on the AP Spanish test meant I was well-equipped to take Romero's grammar and composition class. And well...I was wrong.

Diana Romero is an exceptional professor. She seems to possess the ideal demeanor for a teacher. She is even-tempered, good-humored, and utterly unflappable. She is always available for office hours, patient and willing to help, both in class and out. I have spoken to several of my classmates from this past semester and they all said that they planned to give her rave reviews. Only Spanish is to be spoken in class. During class she will occasionally explain something in English, but only when absolutely necessary.