Gayle Davies

Although I must admitt that I did not want to take this class, I do have to say that I did enjoy it because of Ms. Davies. Her lesson plans and assignments were very interesting, thought provoking and generally made writting quite painless. She focussed on makeing us better writters from wherever it was we were comming from. She did not just help people who needed extra help but also improved the writting of those that wrote well to begin with. I can also say she was approachable and fair. The homework was not excessive ( six 3 page essays) and we had opportunites to improve our grades. If you have to take this class, I would recommend her; you'll learn alot.

This class, English 657 Grammar and Rhetoric of the Sentence, is strictly structured in the department, so I don't think the instructors have a lot of control over the number of tests, papers, homework, etc (weekly grammar exercises, 4 quizzes, 2 short essays, and a final exam). So this class is probably bound to be boring no matter who teaches it. The material focuses primarily on memorization and regurgitation, which is never a thrill. Unfortunately, Gayle makes this horrible class even worse. She has a great, dry sense of humor, and she seems to be a genuinely nice person, but I'm afraid she's just not a good teacher. I can't even count how many times in our class someone disagreed with her reading of the grammar of a sentence, or asked a question about it, only for Gayle to respond by reading the sentence aloud, pausing for a moment, and then saying, "See?" with no other explanation. She seemed to have no conception of how to help confused students, though she's apparently been teaching this class for 20 years. If you must take English 657, I strongly advise you to avoid Gayle. I've heard that Lucas is much better.

Ms. Gayle Davies is a difficult teacher. She grades the last three essays out of six essays assign to the students. However, she doesn't explain thorough to the students. For instance, once you turn in your essays and graded by the instructor. You'll get a red mark or blue mark all over your papers. And you still don't know what you have done wrong. I wish she would go over each students one at a time. If you take this teacher for the next semesters and the future is good luck. Don't get me wrong, her essays assignment is not easy. If you don't believe me then take it for yourself. Because at the beginning of the class, all students were full, but at the end of the semester there were only few students left. I wish I could drop at the beginning of the class but It was too late.

At first she came accross as cold, but as the semester progressed she turned out to be a really cool teacher. She is very willing to help students and allows for work to be turned in late. Davies also gives several opertunities for extra credit assignments, and throws out your two lowest grades on papers. Although her endless (and seemingly pointless) rudementary grammer excersises were trying, all in all it was an interesting class. There were only six essays assigned, and one presentation. No other work was given, and there was no final. There were six novels that we were required to read, and most of them help my interest. Davies' also has a dry sense of humor that grows on you. At first she grades very hard, but if you act like you are trying to do better she will give you the benifit of the doubt and go easy. It is very important to see this teacher several times during her office hours, as she is more sympathetic when grades are handed out.