Generally speaking I think the course content is good, but I rated this course average because of three main reasons.

1). I think a little more effort to organize the material would go a long way. For example, the grammar presentations refer to new vocabulary words that were not introduced in the vocabulary list, and the vocabulary exams refer to content in the grammar section. It would be nice if the curriculum were designed so that you could study the vocabulary, take the vocabulary exam, then review the grammar and leverage what you learned in the vocabulary section to re-enforce your learning.

2). I also think that some of the topics deserve additional clarifications, and the presentations themselves are very short. I appreciate the length of the presentations when reviewing the presentations to refresh my memory, but difficult concepts sometimes require more attention than they are given. In some cases, it seems as though an elegant choice of words to describe a difficult concept is more important than taking the time to deconstruct that concept into simple phrases.

3). Lastly, there are errors in the presentations and exams, and little to no involvement from the professor to clarify points and/or correct those issues. I have noticed comments from students who have reported the same issues for the past two years, and those issues are still not corrected. I used to comment on the message boards for clarifications and to report errors, but after getting zero responses from the professor I stopped participating.

Conclusion:

Overall, I think it's a good course - it provides a good structure for learning the Spanish language despite the above shortcomings. Although they appear very simple to address, I see the same shortcomings exhibited by every course in the series.

1. This course did not provide much focus on speaking skills and pronunciation, but the mandatory peer-graded assignments evaluated the learners on how well other fellow learners understand their vocabularies and pronunciation, which I found quite unfair and very subjective. Evaluation of speaking skills should not have been worth as much as 5 points out of 22, or at least shouldn't have been done through such a poorly designed, heavily subjective question. This is an online, beginner level Spanish class that only lasted the maximum of 3 weeks, the fact that near perfect pronunciation was expected is highly unrealistic. I spent a decade trying to speak understandable English to native English speakers, to expect fellow beginner level, non-native Spanish speakers to understand 100% of my speeches in a course that I only spent 1 week to complete is unreasonable.

2. Peer-graded assignment submission template should be easier to understand to prevent people from accidentally failing to submit their assignment with a valid link to their video/audio records.

3. The program for vocabulary game was a little outdated and all in Spanish, which is harder to understand than the actual vocabularies in the game themselves.

The grammar portion assumes a knowledge I don't have and makes little effort to help me compensate. Hopefully I will be able to absorb it by rote. Other than that, I found the course to be enjoyable and worthwhile.

Many of the assignment directions are unclear or unhelpful at best, and incorrect answers do not result in helpful feedback.

I would very strongly recommend this course. It is a very well thought and planned module, it is fun and informative with some serious assignments that can be challenging but well worth it.

This course seemed to me a little bit harder. Not for complete beginners.

Um curso muito interessante. Mas é necessário um conhecimento básico de inglês e da própria língua espanhola, para poder acompanhar melhor este curso.

The course is fairly well designed and you can learn a lot, but the evaluation method of being rated by peers is far from perfect and can lead to very faulty evaluations.

I think i am benefitting by the structure of the course, but do not feel that the 1 minute videos are adequate to teach the concepts. The quizzes help, but i had to reach out to other sources to learn concepts, e.g. of indirect objects and others. more practice quizzes with answers perhaps?

A good course but had some complains while studying, the modules pratice tests aren't helpful at all and some lessons either, meaning it is sometimes hard to understand what to do in there. Although have good aspects about their peer review and certificate.

Thank you for the opportunity you gave me to study Spanish online! To succeed in this Basic Spanish course, you'll need a lot of: determination, patience, resourcefulness... and a lot of repetition. The lessons were terse, but this pushed me to go out of the course content. If you are a patient self-directed Spanish language learner who wants to be challenged, then this course is for you. Surely, you'll enjoy doing the required assignments. Also, always be a dedicated peer reviewer so you can make the best out of this course; when reviewing your peers' work, try your best to identify errors, learn new words, etc.

It's been my 2 course in this specialization, and I love it! Such a great tutor, such a great set of topics and tasks! Thank you so much! I highly recommend this course not only to those who's just starting to learn Spanish but also to those who feel like they're starting to forget the language.

Very well-organized, detailed lesson, I have understood everything.. My only problem was when i did the writing prompt where i had to complete the sentences... also i have to complain about my classmates who do not pay attention to what they grade and i have lost grades

Este curso es excelente! tuve la oportunidad de seguir aprendiendo español. Estoy estudiando en Argentina y necesito tener la certificación B2. Creo que este curso es fundamental para realizarlo.

We have an amazing professor from UC Davis here. He explains every topic in a very precise, clear and concise manner.

Thank you so much to my instructor for instructing Ana Pelayo.

Ana Pelayo.

Great course, awesome professor!

Very good Spanish course! I was already able to make use of it during my holidays!

quite difficult

Good for learners who have English as the first language and want to learn Spanish as a second language. But this course has a few learners. We will found that so many learners post on Discussion Forums to find or to need help with Gramática & Writing Practice part every week becurse they haven't show In-quiz Feedback so we never know how we wrong! Coursera does not care for the learners. Finally, this course has so many Peer Assignments.

I always submitted my assignments ahead of schedule (or before my deadline) but didn't get a grade or receive any peer review from my classmate. On the Grades page, I checked my assignments were submitted but haven't gotten a grade. It's show "Submitted" but no one reviews my assignments. I waiting for 2-3 days and still haven't gotten a grade (yes! they told us sometimes we would wait up to 10 days before we got a grade). I post my request on discussion forums and still haven't anyone come to read it or answered me. There are few learners in this 5-course specialization so that's why we didn't get a grade or receive any peer review from our classmates on time.

i want to unenroll from this specialization

This could have been a good course, except for the fact that all our assignments are graded by other students. In most cases the other students take their responsibilities and try to do a decent job of grading, but there are some students who have no idea what they are doing when it comes to grading assignments, and there are some students who seem to be downright malicious in their grading. One student in particular ended up grading two of my assignments, and did such a bad job of it that I had to complain to Coursera. Coursera's attitude was "tough luck," and refused to do anything to help me out on that issue. Because of that horrible experience, I decided to drop the course. It's too bad -- I enjoyed everything about the course except for the peer grading. But I couldn't continue with the course under the horrible peer grading system.

This course is well put together and the teacher obviously knows the language, but in my opinion, it is defiitely NOT a beginners course. It is quite challenging. I have taken college level beginner's spanish courses, and the subject matter in those was way more appropriate for beginner (basic words and pronounciation, simple conjugation of verbs). I had to consult with a native spanish speaker for help with some tricky parts and even she was confused and remarked that this level is definitely not for a beginner.

I took 6 years of Spanish. I have taken college courses, distance courses etc. This program is very confusing. The answers to the tests actually make no sense. There is no way to get help. I had a spanish professor look at the tst and the answered I had tried and they could not figure out what the answer was.

I am requesting to unenroll this course because I've already started one other language course hoping for your consideration. Thank you!