I found that Chinese 101 and Chinese 102 were a very excellently prepared and well-taught class. The professor is excellent and does a very good job creating a nonthreatening environment that promotes education (especially for foreign languages). Along with the weekly homework assignment (which consisted of characters, oral performance, grammar, and listening) and weekly quizzes, the teacher also assigned each student a time each week to practice pronunciation with a person tutor session. Each student also had the option of paring up with another student at the university that was a native Chinese speaker. Mine is a graduate student who came from China. We meet every week and we help each other in each of our respective languages. I find that the teacher is very well organized and gives every chance for the student to succeed. Although there seemed to be a lot of work to do for each week, the teacher added a lot of variety to the class activities that were very refreshing. Some of the different activities were going to watch the Chinese New Year celebration at the mall during the weekend. We also did different cultural simulators that helped us understand the different cultural values of China. Later this week we will also watch a Chinese film to further our understanding of the culture. Overall I think this class was a very good introduction not only to the Chinese language but to the culture as well. About half the class isn't Chinese so this isn't a class just for American Born Chinese like me.