Co Thu Ba is sooo sweet and caring! Coming into the class I had a decent amount of Vietnamese already known in terms of understanding, so I didn't have much difficulty following along to her instructions. But for those who don't have much experience, it may be a bit hard to continuously follow along.

I would also advise everyone to really try and understand the tone marks instead of just copying it down for the whole class, because it speeds up the process of writing and in general is just better for your knowledge.

I'm writing my review a year later (currently W24) and so when I took the V1A series last year, we had Jessica as our TA and the general consensus was that she was chill. I personally liked her. However, several of my friends who are taking the class this year have a lot of complaints about her being strict about grading (particularly accent marks) so really make sure you double check your work ig.

The textbook is used throughout the quarter, but she posts the pictures of the hw problems so you don't need to buy it.

Overall though I made some really great friends in the class who I'm super close to now, and I think it's a great course to take. You can tell Co Thu Ba really cares about her students and does her best to make sure you know.

Cô Thu Ba is an amazing and fun professor. She's always super energetic, and she's truly interested in our learning. She teaches the entire VIET 1A-3A series, which fulfills the language requirement.

There are no traditional exams, but the individual "midterm" and "final" consist of you basically writing a short essay based on a prompt and creatively filming yourself speaking it. There is also a group final, where based on a prompt, you write a script and film a skit. You have group assignments throughout the quarter that are supposed to help you guys continuously work on the final group project.

The main are the "Student's Notes" and homework. Student's Notes are worksheets that you fill in class, that are essentially a lot of fill-in-the blank that you copy from lecture. I found those mostly just tedious, especially since they were due the morning after every lecture. Homework was weekly and usually consisted of doing exercises from the textbook. I though those were more useful. I personally bought the textbook because I wanted to do some self-learning, but many in the class didn't, and that's okay since she posts scans of the book for you to do HW.

Lectures are recorded, but attendance is part of your grade. For Viet 3A in Spring, she had a live Zoom and in-person option

By the end of the class, my parents remarked that my Vietnamese was noticeably better. Overall, while some work in the class is just a lot of busywork, you do genuinely learn, and I bonded with the other people in the class. If you have Vietnamese heritage and need to fulfill the language requirement, I highly recommend taking this whole series!