AMES-353S

EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AS L2S

Not in Fall 2026

AMES · Taught by Chen, Yunchuan · Last offered Spring 2024

Overview

Feedback is mostly positive. The strongest signal is that students say they actually learn something useful. Best for students who want substance, not a disposable elective. The sample is still thin, so treat this as directional rather than definitive.

DepartmentAMES

Terms offeredSpring

Typical enrollment10–10

Semesters of data1

3.3

Hrs / week

Responses

Enrollment

90%

Response Rate

Evaluation Scores

Overall quality

Teaching, content, and experience combined.

4.0

12345

Intellectually stimulating

Challenges students to think deeply.

4.3

12345

Instructor effectiveness

Explains concepts and facilitates learning.

4.3

12345

Difficulty

Higher means harder.

3.3

12345

Feedback Analysis

Feedback Analysislow

Analysis based on student evaluations

Based on 35 comments across 1 sections

Student Reports

How hard is the A?

A is doable but not automatic

The signal here is more do-the-work-and-you-should-be-fine than easy-A chatter. Students do not describe the A as automatic, but the evidence also does not paint grading as punishing.

Homework Load

Heavy homework load

Homework load is one of the clearest friction points. Students repeatedly describe assignments, readings, or problem sets as time-consuming.

Lecture Load

Regular lecture load

Lectures matter here, but the evidence points to a fairly standard lecture burden rather than a course dominated by long or exceptionally dense lectures.

Strengths

• Students repeatedly say the course teaches something concrete, whether that is content mastery, research skill, or a strong foundation.

Tradeoffs

• There is no single dominant complaint theme, but the feedback is not uniformly glowing either.

Best fit for

Best for students who want substance, not a disposable elective.

Watch out for

• Most of the signal comes from a limited sample, so be careful about over-generalizing.

• A large share of the evidence comes from one instructor's version of the course, so this may not generalize cleanly.

Student Responses

We learned how to identify quality language learning activities for East Asian Languages, critically consider literature pertaining to East Asian language acquisition, and design our own studies that can test different questions about East Asian language acquisition.

Spring 2024 · Chen, Yunchuan

I was able to learn more skills related to acquisition of a 2nd language. I feel like I was able to apply a lot of what I learned in this course to enhance my foreign language leaning.

Spring 2024 · Chen, Yunchuan

I learned how to dissect research papers for linguistics (summary, critiques, as well as propose future studies) while learning several different language phenomena in Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. Lastly, I learned how to analyze my language teacher's teaching pedagogy and learned why they make us do what they do.

Spring 2024 · Chen, Yunchuan

I learned a lot about language in this class. I learned a lot about how we understand learning second languages as whole. I also learned a lot about different linguistic concepts as this was my first linguistics course I have taken. It also taught me how I think about my own Korean ability and fluency and how I understand different aspects of it.

Spring 2024 · Chen, Yunchuan

I learned about different linguistic structures (relative clauses, demonstratives, various constraints), aspects of language acquisition, and the similarities/differences between East Asian languages.

Spring 2024 · Chen, Yunchuan

Rating History

Rating history

Error bars show \u00B11 std dev

Term	Instructor	Overall	Difficulty	Hrs/wk	Enrolled
Spring 2024	Chen, Yunchuan 5.0Rate My ProfessorsQuality5.0Difficulty2.0Would retake100%Based on 5 ratingsClick to view on RMP →	4.0	3.3	3.3	10

Instructor

Chen, YunchuanAMES

Also teaches

AMES-334S JPN LANGUAGE & SOCIETY4.6 JPN-305 ADVANCED JAPANESE4.8