I took with French 12 and French 118 with Professor Werner.

I went in to my first class with him pretty scared after what I read on here. Seriously though, people on bruinwalk need to suck it up. First, he's an absolute genius. I don't think I've ever meet a more intelligent person in my life. And yes, this makes him rather intimidating. Asking questions can be a scary experience but he'll always take them. If you go to class (something that 8 people of my 12 person class failed to do) he'll change the way you think. Yeah, he's difficult. He told me to rewrite my entire 8 page research paper 3 days before it was due. He expects a lot from his students, so don't expect that you can turn in an awful paper and he won't care. He INSISTS that you bring him a draft a couple days before the due date so he can go over it. If you're on top of your stuff (I honestly wasn't) and get an early start, there's no reason why you should do poorly. He'll give you tons of notes and suggestions on your paper when he hands it back, which is always within a week. The books you have to read are challenging and, yes, sometimes a little boring. If you go to class, however, he'll point out passages that would make a good paper. It's tempting not to go to class because he doesn't grade on participation. But seriously, GO TO CLASS. I don't know how you would have any clue what you're doing otherwise. He always emphasizes the fond and the forme. He wants concrete details and really pushes you to analyze the style, which was the hard part for me. If you just sit down the night before and crank out some paper on abstract ideas then don't expect to do well. Yeah, he talks really fast. But he reads things the way they're supposed to be read. He's not you're French 1 TA. Also, he repeats everything in his lectures like 50 times so if you miss it the first time he'll probably come back to it. For French 12, the exams weren't bad at all. Go to class, and study the lectures. All you had to do was regurgitate what he said and you were fine. When grading papers he was more difficult, but he's a challenging teacher.

Yeah, he's an old guy. This was his 47th year teaching at UCLA. He loves the subject and he loves teaching. Somebody wrote that he was rude. He was always polite to my class and greeted us every day. Yes, his tests are typed on a typewriter and he writes in the accents. So what. If you're considering taking a class with him, don't go by all of these other reviews. He was one of the most influential teachers I've ever had. Who knows how much longer he'll be teaching, so take him if you can!