Professor
Claire Lavagnino
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2018 - Claire is fantastic. Super nice, super understanding, and very clear with expectations. She makes sure all homework activities are relevant to exams and offers lots of extra credit opportunities. Her outfits are sick and she's super energetic for every class. Also bought the whole class cupcakes from Whole Foods for someone's birthday
Fall 2018 - Claire is fantastic. Super nice, super understanding, and very clear with expectations. She makes sure all homework activities are relevant to exams and offers lots of extra credit opportunities. Her outfits are sick and she's super energetic for every class. Also bought the whole class cupcakes from Whole Foods for someone's birthday
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - Abs loved this class and Claire. Claire is the kindest person ever. I went to almost every single Office Hours and she is so kind and understanding and helpful with actually learning the language. When teaching new languages it is so important to be encouraging because otherwise, it's really scary! Claire was so encouraging to everybody even when we'd get a lot of stuff wrong. Claire is amazing both as a person and as an instructor. Class structure prioritized participation. Attendance was required and worth 15% of your grade. There were homeworks after every class which were super easy and quick. Took no more than an hour, but they were really easy so it felt shorter even. Sometimes I could get them done in 10 mins. HW was 10% of grade. 3 Quizzes (30%) with extensive practice quizzes on Canvas so if you studied you could def get an A on all of them, and 3 Compositions (20%) no more than a page long. The Final (25%) was hard though! I got a 90 on it. I would definitely recommend going to Office Hours if you really want to learn Italian. You can just practice speaking, which is really how you learn the language! Overall, I would absolutely recommend taking this class and going to OH. It was not stressful at all. For the quizzes just do the practice tests like 5 times and there's no way you won't get an A! I also recommend making flashcards for new vocab.
Fall 2023 - Abs loved this class and Claire. Claire is the kindest person ever. I went to almost every single Office Hours and she is so kind and understanding and helpful with actually learning the language. When teaching new languages it is so important to be encouraging because otherwise, it's really scary! Claire was so encouraging to everybody even when we'd get a lot of stuff wrong. Claire is amazing both as a person and as an instructor. Class structure prioritized participation. Attendance was required and worth 15% of your grade. There were homeworks after every class which were super easy and quick. Took no more than an hour, but they were really easy so it felt shorter even. Sometimes I could get them done in 10 mins. HW was 10% of grade. 3 Quizzes (30%) with extensive practice quizzes on Canvas so if you studied you could def get an A on all of them, and 3 Compositions (20%) no more than a page long. The Final (25%) was hard though! I got a 90 on it. I would definitely recommend going to Office Hours if you really want to learn Italian. You can just practice speaking, which is really how you learn the language! Overall, I would absolutely recommend taking this class and going to OH. It was not stressful at all. For the quizzes just do the practice tests like 5 times and there's no way you won't get an A! I also recommend making flashcards for new vocab.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2022 - This was my first formal Italian class in my life (I'm a native speaker and took a placement test) and I was very nervous coming in. Thankfully, this ended up being one of my favorite classes I've taken at UCLA. Professor Lavagnino is an amazing instructor and is one of the most thoughtful and kind professors I've ever had. She is very clear about instructions and is always taking feedback from students and changing the course to adapt to everyone's needs. She was also extremely understanding about missing class or needing extensions, something very helpful because I was very sick for a good portion of the quarter. The work was fairly straightforward - It consisted of exercises from our textbook, writing assignments, and one presentation at the end of the quarter. While the amount of assignments was more than other classes, they didn't require much time. There were also 2 take-home quizzes throughout the quarter, though she literally gave us the entire quiz beforehand to study. They were fairly easy regardless and never required significant amounts of studying. Otherwise, participation is also very important in the class. Professor Lavagnino is, however, very encouraging of participation and makes it very easy to talk during class. As long as you show up and do the homework, all the participation is very straightforward. Overall I would highly recommend this class and Professor Lavagnino in general! I had a fantastic time and will genuinely miss this class
Spring 2022 - This was my first formal Italian class in my life (I'm a native speaker and took a placement test) and I was very nervous coming in. Thankfully, this ended up being one of my favorite classes I've taken at UCLA. Professor Lavagnino is an amazing instructor and is one of the most thoughtful and kind professors I've ever had. She is very clear about instructions and is always taking feedback from students and changing the course to adapt to everyone's needs. She was also extremely understanding about missing class or needing extensions, something very helpful because I was very sick for a good portion of the quarter. The work was fairly straightforward - It consisted of exercises from our textbook, writing assignments, and one presentation at the end of the quarter. While the amount of assignments was more than other classes, they didn't require much time. There were also 2 take-home quizzes throughout the quarter, though she literally gave us the entire quiz beforehand to study. They were fairly easy regardless and never required significant amounts of studying. Otherwise, participation is also very important in the class. Professor Lavagnino is, however, very encouraging of participation and makes it very easy to talk during class. As long as you show up and do the homework, all the participation is very straightforward. Overall I would highly recommend this class and Professor Lavagnino in general! I had a fantastic time and will genuinely miss this class
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