Greet Van Belle

I have to say, I think Greet is borderline genius (and check your egos at the door because this class will most likely be quite the humbling experience) but the rest of us (specifically myself included) are not. I’m a literature/ writing major, no talent for foreign languages, possibly the same handicap another reviewer mentioned, but nonetheless with an enormous admiration and jealousy for those who do have it. My French tutor, also Belgian, picks up language fluency like colds, in fact I had no idea she was not a native Parisian speaker until she made a comment about translating from French to Dutch to English. Either way, I sincerely had a chuckle, in identification with some frustrated reviews and a completely lost, FOREIGN alienation from others. I once did a radio show with a DJ friend and he said that the only people who call or write in are those that either love you or hate you. With that subjectivity in mind and the nature of these reviews, I never really planned on writing this—spell check please— this is supposed to be Ivy. Anyhow, that said, she has that inexplicable quality (in spades) that makes or breaks a professor, i.e. an ability that cannot be taught, to reveal and instruct, in an epiphany way. She is entertaining, charming and really quite stellar .but will that win you a grade on an exam not so much. If you are more advanced than you claim to be, which I…

I am still taking this course, but I felt that I just had to say something about Greet. This is the second part of Elementary French and, naturally, most of us are far from being fluent. However, the amount of French that we have learned in this intensive summer course is tantamount to what one would learn in a whole year. Greet is as enthusiastic a professor as I have ever met and during the two hours/day four days a week that we meet, she keeps the group involved and constantly talking and discussing the nuances of the language. I would absolutely recommend Greet van Belle if you really, really want to learn French.

She's horrible! I've never had such a terrible professor before. She never taught us anything. She expected us to know french and to say things naturally (I thought that it was her job to teach us this) So many people quit her class this semester, and if I knew better I would have too. Even when I asked her for explanations of grammatical things, she would just say that I should stop trying to learn it, and should just memorize it and say it naturally ( i never got that). we never did any of the compositions, the tests were terrible cuz they're from the department and she didn't prepare us for it. What ever u do don't take her class.

Greet was wonderful. Because the class was too large (28 of us), she worked quickly to get approval from the registrar's office to divide the class into two. It must be difficult to teach the same class twice a day, each lasting 2 hours, but she came to the second class with great enthusiasm (often more than the students) and was always fair and encouraging. Made learning French a pleasure.

While I agree with the previous reviews on the fact that Greet is always one step behind in bringing the right assignment to class and e-mailing us information, I have to commend her spirit. She has a way of bringing texts to life by reading aloud and assigning different affected voices to each character. Her renditions of the literature were often hilarious, even though she was sometimes hesitant to listen to students' ideas. I was always glad I went to class by the time it was over because in just one hour I had developped such a new and interesting perspective on the texts.

This class was very stressful for me as I do not intend on pursuing French any further than I have to in order to fulfill the language requirement. I mean, seriously, my major is psychology. She is very thoroughand a good professor , but a bit much if you do not intend on continuing French or if you are not serious about it. There is a LOT of work: 3 composititions, 3 quizzes (with plenty of vocab you won't know), and a midterm adn final. She also assigns homework every night, and assigns little assignments that she thinks will be "fun" for us that se randomly thinks of in class. This class got annoying for me pretty quickly. But if you really want to learn the language and aren't just trying to fulfill the language requirement, than it is a good and thorough class, and I have to say, I did learn quite a bit.

The workload is heavy. There is the daily reading from the textbook and the assignments in the written and oral workbooks, but if it were not so, we would probably not learn anything by the end of the semester. Quite naturally, because it is a summer course (only 6 weeks), one expects the workload to be heavy, but how else are you going to learn?

Greet from Belgique...she is a linguist and the best foreign language instructor i ever had ( french is the 5th language i am learning..) she is extraordinary and not everybody likes her because she has her own ways to explain grammatical peculiarities--and there are a lot in french...but she gives you a foundation in french that is very solid and the tools to learn any other language easier...I love her style of teaching!

I find this professor to be on top of things. She is also very passionate about teaching French, and really goes out of her way to make the class interesting. She also makes sure no one gets lost in the class. What I like most about her is that she's 'human.'

While the previous reviewer was accurate about Greet's disorganization, I think that in terms of teaching she was quite satisfying, very passionate about many of the works, and was very open to hear students' comments about the texts (even when they were extremely unfounded). And while the workload is definitely above average, she is a very fair and lenient grader, and will not take off points for grammar/spelling mistakes. Besides, isn't this how you improve your French?