Reyes Llopis-Garcia

3 hard quizzes, 3 oral presentations requiring a ton of memorizing, Blink assignments, and a couple of several-hundred word writing assignments.

Much heavier workload than any other Spanish class at this level or the Intermediate II level. After the first three chapters, she stops holding exams and replaces them with projects that will make you wish you had the exams instead due to the workload involved (about 5 different 400-word assignments for one project). She also refuses to give 100s. Note also the class is entirely pen-and-paper, although iPads are allowed.

I became more comfortable having conversations in Spanish and learned more about Spanish grammar. I also learned how to describe myself and others, activities, professions, topics relating to school, weather, and locations in this course.

We learned conversational Spanish that would help us apply to international jobs and help the environment. We also learned several conjugations for future, conditional, and subjunctive. 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Spring 2021 Course: SPANUN2101_005_2021_1-INTERMEDIATESPANISHI : SPANUN2101_005_2021_1 - INTERMEDIATE SPANISH I Instructor: Leire Alejaldre Biel

Weekly readings- manageable & interesting. An in-class presentation Multimedia essays- the technology was cumbersome but the essays themselves weren't bad Huge final paper on topic of choice

If you're looking for a guaranteed A or to just get the Spanish requirement over with, this class is not it. I think my Spanish improved substantially throughout this class but she expects a lot of work/effort & grades (IMO) somewhat harshly. She also graded quite slowly making it impossible to make necessary adjustments in between quizzes.

RLLG expects much more from her students than I believe is necessary for a required Spanish class. While it definitely seems true that she cares about learning, she also seems to have an unreasonable expectation of the time Columbia students have and should have to dedicate to her class. She very strictly enforces attendance to the point of deducting points from athletes for expected absences or from students who have to be absent for severe family emergencies. She acts very kind and caring when you talk to her, but it is not reflected in her actions. It slightly gives the air of a middle school Spanish teacher. This is all unfortunate because I do believe she has a skill for teaching well, and if this wasn't muddled by her passive aggressive attitude and unnecessarily strict rules I would have been very grateful to have taken her class. I see how past reviews have led her to have a gold nugget, but this can also be somewhat misleading.

I've learned how to share and understand identifying information about myself and others, how to ask questions and get clarification, how to locate things geographically or relative to one another, how to compare things and ideas, how to talk about time, weather, and emotion (all in present tense) . I also learned a lot more than I expected about culture from across the whole Spanish-speaking world.

Linguistics students, take this course. As far as course material goes RLLG gives you a broad introduction to CogLing, and in particular important terminology, readings from the big fish in the field, and how to find underlying CogLing principles in our daily language use. You end up doing a lot of independent research for her papers, going through youtube videos and reading outside articles. Class discussions were lively and there's a lot of freedom built in to her assignments. For longer papers and even for shorter assignments you can write about most anything you want as long as you can frame it in a CogLing way of thinking. This class plugs a big hole in the CogLing-light Linguistics "department." So take this. RLLS is smart, really nice, and responds to e-mails quickly, even at hours when humans shouldn't be awake. It's a plus to know Spanish for this course, but it's definitely not necessary.

Reyes is an engaging, dynamic ball of lightning. She is one of my intellectual role models.