Javier Perez-Zapatero

By far the worst class I've ever taken in my entire time at Columbia. Javier is an up-tight, type a control freak. He acts as if his class is the only reason you came to college in the first place. He's needlessly punitive and grades very harshly. The worst part is that his class is horribly awkward and silent, with everyone terrified of making a mistake. I've never felt a pit in my stomach going to class before. I've never had a professor take points off for walking in 6 minutes late one too many times. I've never had a professor refuse to give me excused absences for major life events. He gave me un-excused absences for a funeral, even after I gave him advanced notice and my advisor emailed him to let him know. He didn't care. I was so terrified of failing that I actually came to class the day of the wake, and missed half of the service. He still failed me.

SO KING and understanding. I didn't really enjoy the class because there was so much busy work, but I enjoyed getting to know Javier. He loves joking around and making sure you understand any/everything!

Do not take this class. I have never had a worse professor than him. He played favorites, accused multiple people of plagiarism, and was such a harsh grader. Whenever certain people in my class (1-2 people) didn't turn in their homework they wouldn't get penalized but when I talked to other students this wasn't the case. There was also just obvious favoritism in the way he acted towards them.

I thought that the subject was very interesting, it was my first time learning about gay culture. Javier is such a great professor, he is so friendly, kind, and helpful! He is easy to approach and is willing to help students. I was nervous about this class the first day since it is upper level, but his voice is very calming and he doesn't make his students feel stupid if their Spanish isn't the best. This class made me want to minor in Spanish. You should really take a class with Javier, he is great!!

Oh my gosh, Javier is the kindest professor around. He is super patient, friendly, and the class never had that uptight, intimidating feeling of many language classes. Ideally, you speak Spanish the whole time, but Javier's not above explaining something in English if it's necessary. My speaking skills improved much more in this single semester class than in my three years of high school Spanish. Javier uses great PowerPoints (which he also posts online), language and speaking exercises, and his approach seemed to provide the basis for a really natural acquisition of the language. The class is light on written repetition, so unless you take the outside initiative it might be difficult to build up vocabulary and grammatical rules. Take this class!!

I'm writing this review as a warning to all those who dare to take a class with Javier. He plays favorites, and lots of the reviews written about him previously are written by his favorites. I am not one of them. It's also important to note that, shockingly, I got an A- in this class. Javier relentlessly accused me of cheating and using AI in his Intermediate Spanish 1 class. I met with him several times throughout the semester to try and understand what I was doing wrong, and his response was that my work was just "too good." From a language learning perspective, I understood his skepticism at first and therefore made multiple attempts to prove myself to him. I never turned an assignment in late, I was an active participant in class discussions, I did extra credit assignments, I showed him the multiple drafts I would write for each project, etc. etc. Desperate for improved grades, I once submitted an assignment with manufactured errors, simple but obvious things that I knew he would catch. He proceeded to give me the same (failing) grades, saying it was too perfect. He is one of the co-authors of the Blinklearning textbook and therefore believes he knows the ins-and-outs of the curriculum and is never wrong. One time the note he left on an assignment he failed was "use of grammatical structures we haven't learned yet." Having only used structures we had learned, I emailed him…

Javier is by far the best professor that I have had at Columbia so far. He genuinely cares about helping students learn the language, and gives very thorough feedback on all assignments. Despite the fact that my class used to meet at Friday's at 4, I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you're going to take Spanish, take it with Javier.

Amazing, amazing professor. Most of our classes were spent watching entertaining and informative videos about our current subject. The subject changed every week, and every week somebody had to hold a short presentation on it and afterwards facilitate a class discussion which was surprisingly easier than it sounds because everybody was willing to participate. Javier is the kindest guy ever and even if your Spanish is shabby like mine he will never make you feel stupid about it but listen with patience and still correct your mistakes when necessary and helping you. He writes relatively long comments on your weekly assignments which I found really helpful in getting better at Spanish. If you have a chance to take a class with this guy, do it now! You won't regret it.

This man is the best professor I have had so far at Barnard. If you are lucky enough to have the opportunity to take a Spanish class with him, I would highly encourage you to do so. He is extremely kind, caring and patient. Even when people in my class asked him repetitive questions and yelled out in English, he never lost his temper and remained extremely calm. His comments on all of my papers were extremely extensive and helpful and he is very available outside of the classroom. Because he is from Barcelona he really loves Spanish language and culture as well as sharing it with his students. Although the workload was a lot (we had to do all of the exercises for all the chapters we did in the red and blue gente workbooks as well as selected grammar exercises and compositions), I feel like I learned more Spanish with Javier in one semester than I did in my four years of Spanish before college.

Avoid this man at all costs. He's petty, needlessly punitive & holds grudges based on first impressions. Nobody in my class learned anything. Somehow everyone else passed. The building was put on lockdown after roughly a week of classes. Instead of just walking in, you'd have to walk an extra 10-15 minutes, all the way down to 117th and broadway. He didn't care. If he himself walked in late, that was just tough.