Thursday, May 08, 2008
[español=loco]
oh my goodness.when i first started my spanish class this semester, i was actually excited.
i cant wait to hopefully be fluent in the language, not only because i live in texas where spanish is spoken nearly as much as english, but also because in many jobs being bilingual is a plus (and means higher pay).
when i was being advised when signing up for my classes this semester i asked my advisor if i should try and test into a higher level of spanish. i took spanish for 3 semesters in high school, my freshman year and half of my sophomore and am consistently amazed at how much i actually remember. my advisor told me not to, and that a refresher course is good for most people.
mistake #1.
i should have never taken 506.
the class takes attendance, and youre only allowed to miss 5 before your grade starts getting docked.
i BLEW through the class, never studied, and consistently made As on everything.
going to the class everyday was literally a waste of time.
and, i was also extremely annoyed that it was the class that required the most of my time, for no purpose. i had assignments nearly every night that were basically busy work. practice on things i knew by heart.
the book and student activities manual were awful, and this is a problem because it was written by the head of the spanish department at the university. the book uses this technique where it doesnt explain anything, and just tries to get you to figure it out by things such as reading passages with vocabulary no one could understand. had i not taken spanish in high school im confident i would have done awful in this class.
i figured out that the student activities manual was a joke after my first week of class when we learned numbers. part of the homework was a number series where there was a number omitted and you were to figure out the number and write it out in spanish. i dont skip things when i do homework. if i cant figure something out i will sit there and work on it until i can. one of these number sequences was IMPOSSIBLE. this isnt a math class, its spanish. i instant messaged my friend to try and get her help; she couldnt figure it out either. she proceeded to ask 6 of her friends including 2 engineering majors and a math major, none of whom could figure it out either.
the lab was another fiasco.
nothing we did in lab ever aligned with what we were doing in class and we had to have dialogs with each other about things like why the bus was late, when we didnt have the vocabulary to do so.
not only was the class awful, but the teacher was not much better.
she was consistently rude, unfair, and condescending.
she even quoted the godfather at one point in the class saying something along the lines of "never have i met people who treated me with such disrespect."
with all due respect, respect is a two-way street.
after struggling all semester with the fact that i was wasting my time, the department decided to get rid of spanish 507 which comes next in the language sequence if you take 506 first.
so, instead of taking 507 i am now forced to take spanish 508k which combines 506 and 507, meaning i will be forced to sit through a class that was already too easy again for half of my fall semester.
ugh.
obviously, my high school was doing something right, and the university is doing something wrong.
by jen at 3:45 PM |
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