Professor
Abeer Mohamed Hamza
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - I have taken Abeer Hamza for over a year and this is my full and final review of her as a Professor: She’s literally racist; for a project once, she said my interview of a Heritage speaker didn’t count because I didn’t interview an ‘actual Arab.’ Mind you, the person I had chose to interview was a Pakistani who was born and lived in the U.A.E all her life and spoke Arabic fluently. She takes forever to respond to her emails. A professor who cares to respond and communicate with her students makes a world of difference in the classroom, and Hamza just doesn’t do that. She gives an insane amount of homework as if it’s a high school class. Her inconsistency with her advice and feedback on the homework doesn’t make it any easier. For example, she’ll let you go weeks doing the homework a certain way, until she finally decides she wants you to do it another way. She once gave us the whole day to submit a test and we had two attempts….GREAT! But then for the second test she gave us only an hour to finish and expected us to take it twice as well. In short, she’s lazy and inconsistent with her grading. She is not lenient with attendance. Your dad could be dying, and she won’t care. She’ll mark you for being absent. This is the laziest Professor I have come across in my entire academic career. She refuses to have classes in-person even though 95% of the class will ask her. Doesn’t grade fairly or consistently, and can’t even communicate to you regularly via email. She isn’t fit for teaching. Abeer Hamza has been a huge headache for the year that I’ve taken her. Myself and several other classmates literally have had emotional breakdowns to each other. So if you take Hamza, and you’re not an Arab that speaks fluent fusha, understand that you’re in for a ride.
Fall 2023 - I have taken Abeer Hamza for over a year and this is my full and final review of her as a Professor: She’s literally racist; for a project once, she said my interview of a Heritage speaker didn’t count because I didn’t interview an ‘actual Arab.’ Mind you, the person I had chose to interview was a Pakistani who was born and lived in the U.A.E all her life and spoke Arabic fluently. She takes forever to respond to her emails. A professor who cares to respond and communicate with her students makes a world of difference in the classroom, and Hamza just doesn’t do that. She gives an insane amount of homework as if it’s a high school class. Her inconsistency with her advice and feedback on the homework doesn’t make it any easier. For example, she’ll let you go weeks doing the homework a certain way, until she finally decides she wants you to do it another way. She once gave us the whole day to submit a test and we had two attempts….GREAT! But then for the second test she gave us only an hour to finish and expected us to take it twice as well. In short, she’s lazy and inconsistent with her grading. She is not lenient with attendance. Your dad could be dying, and she won’t care. She’ll mark you for being absent. This is the laziest Professor I have come across in my entire academic career. She refuses to have classes in-person even though 95% of the class will ask her. Doesn’t grade fairly or consistently, and can’t even communicate to you regularly via email. She isn’t fit for teaching. Abeer Hamza has been a huge headache for the year that I’ve taken her. Myself and several other classmates literally have had emotional breakdowns to each other. So if you take Hamza, and you’re not an Arab that speaks fluent fusha, understand that you’re in for a ride.
Most Helpful Review
I took Arabic 102A, B, and C and Arabic 111A, B, and C with Dr. Mohamed. She is a fantastic Arabic teacher, one of the best I have ever had. She is also one of the nicest profs I have ever taken. She gladly answers questions after class and is very helpful during office hours. Her only fault is that she may be a little too nice, she rarely puts students on the spot or asks them do do things she knows they cannot. Her MA is in translation between Arabic, English, and Spanish and she is very good at helping students translate the meaning and is flexible with translations on tests. She explains difficult grammar concepts very clearly and almost always explains things in a much better manner than the book. She also does her best to speak as much Arabic in class as possible. She is a very generous grader and wants her students to succeed. The biggest problem with Arabic at UCLA is that the classes aren't demanding enough. Many students expect to be able to walk in, do the homework and "learn" Arabic and if they don't they blame the teacher. Learning a foreign language (especially a difficult one) is not like any other class. Constant review is required. You can't forget chapter 1 when you're in chapter 3. In fact, you need to know chapter 1 better in chapter 3 than you did for the chapter 1 test. Language learning is much like learning an instrument, you must build upon and constantly review everything in order to move forward. It's not like a History class where you can skate by and memorize a bunch of facts for a test and then brain dump, every test is a cumulative final. The Al-Kitaab text is not the best, but it's the one most universities use and in fact, there aren't many other texts to choose from. Use of Al-Kitaab also allows students from other universities to study at UCLA and vice versa. My favorite class I've taken at UCLA was her Egyptian Arabic (111A, B, C) class. The first two quarters were difficult and I felt like I wasn't learning a whole lot, but by midway through the third quarter we had finally covered enough material that things started to click. All of a sudden I could just understand. I now can watch Egyptian movies and actually know whats going on. I am looking forward to taking Advanced Egyptian (Arab112) with Abeer next Fall.
I took Arabic 102A, B, and C and Arabic 111A, B, and C with Dr. Mohamed. She is a fantastic Arabic teacher, one of the best I have ever had. She is also one of the nicest profs I have ever taken. She gladly answers questions after class and is very helpful during office hours. Her only fault is that she may be a little too nice, she rarely puts students on the spot or asks them do do things she knows they cannot. Her MA is in translation between Arabic, English, and Spanish and she is very good at helping students translate the meaning and is flexible with translations on tests. She explains difficult grammar concepts very clearly and almost always explains things in a much better manner than the book. She also does her best to speak as much Arabic in class as possible. She is a very generous grader and wants her students to succeed. The biggest problem with Arabic at UCLA is that the classes aren't demanding enough. Many students expect to be able to walk in, do the homework and "learn" Arabic and if they don't they blame the teacher. Learning a foreign language (especially a difficult one) is not like any other class. Constant review is required. You can't forget chapter 1 when you're in chapter 3. In fact, you need to know chapter 1 better in chapter 3 than you did for the chapter 1 test. Language learning is much like learning an instrument, you must build upon and constantly review everything in order to move forward. It's not like a History class where you can skate by and memorize a bunch of facts for a test and then brain dump, every test is a cumulative final. The Al-Kitaab text is not the best, but it's the one most universities use and in fact, there aren't many other texts to choose from. Use of Al-Kitaab also allows students from other universities to study at UCLA and vice versa. My favorite class I've taken at UCLA was her Egyptian Arabic (111A, B, C) class. The first two quarters were difficult and I felt like I wasn't learning a whole lot, but by midway through the third quarter we had finally covered enough material that things started to click. All of a sudden I could just understand. I now can watch Egyptian movies and actually know whats going on. I am looking forward to taking Advanced Egyptian (Arab112) with Abeer next Fall.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2024 - I've taken a few classes with Professor Hamza, and this one was my favorite! The first half of the quarter we did Lesson 9 in the textbook, and the workload was a lot, but probably not much more than any other Arabic class at UCLA. For the second half of the class, we focused on songs, stories, tv shows, and more real-life materials. The switch was a little difficult because it wasn't as clear cut as the textbook, but professor is very helpful and responds to emails fast. Overall, I enjoyed this class, the professor is great, the only thing is that the workload can be heavy.
Winter 2024 - I've taken a few classes with Professor Hamza, and this one was my favorite! The first half of the quarter we did Lesson 9 in the textbook, and the workload was a lot, but probably not much more than any other Arabic class at UCLA. For the second half of the class, we focused on songs, stories, tv shows, and more real-life materials. The switch was a little difficult because it wasn't as clear cut as the textbook, but professor is very helpful and responds to emails fast. Overall, I enjoyed this class, the professor is great, the only thing is that the workload can be heavy.
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