Ilona Vandergriff

hey man.. wish me luck.... i will own u all anyway.. consider the fact many chinese speal 2 languages already,, vandergrill is just a joke haha

Vandergriff is a nice teacher. The midterm and final reviews are very helpful: she hands out a bunch of questions which could appear on the exam (the exams are essay) and everybody writes their answers. She also assigns a lot of extra work; she feels that she has to incorporate the web activities and other stuff.Part of the grade is based on essays to be written at home and turned in. Some students had their German boyfriends write their take home essays, which was unfair to the rest of the classmates who had to work hard for their grade. some of us wondered how prof. Vandergriff could not notice that these otherwise mediocre students were turning in essays free of grammar mistakes, in a writing style that did not remotely resemble the writing style they had in in class exams. This was quite a turn off; I felt I like I was wasting my time working hard and I should have just gotten a German girlfriend instead.

I love Proffesorin Vandergriff. She was my main motivation for changing my Major to German. She is a beautiful person whose high standards actually motivated me to work harder to be like her. I would consider her one of my role models. She is always focused in class--I could not believe that she had a whole other agenda with the multiple other german classes she teaches. If you are interested in german or just need to fill GE, definately take one of her classes.

Her strengths are her cheerful personality, her enthusiasm for the material, and her very hard work. Her weaknesses are, she is so nice she lets some students push her around and lets them get away with crap. She is also a bit disorganized, because I think she tries to do too much and tries much too hard to do new and innovative things. Sometimes her experiments don't come off well, and on the occasions that they do, it seems like they were more work than they were worth. For instance our web activities tended to be too involved at times for the level of the students, and the time comittment, but it is better than sitting in class doing drills day after day. Overall, I found her class to be enjoyable, useful and interesting.

Prof. Vandergriff is perhaps one of the most cheerful people I know. She is a delight to watch teach as she laughs easily and is always warm and friendly. I have taken many classes taught by her and have never been disappointed. She uses modern methods to teach, especially the internet, because she knows what an important source of information it is and I thinks she wants us to become really familiar using it. She is an extremely fair grader; a B will not be difficult to earn, but you will have to work for an A. Have someone fluent in German proofread your essays. Prof. Vandergriff always emphasizes grammar and will take off points if there are too many mistakes.

Professor Vanderiff is a very capable and knowledgable instructor, not to mention very good looking. Her classes are difficult but not impossible. If you do the work, come to class and participate, the worst grade you could get is probably a B. She is an intelligent person with seemingly limitless information in her head which she can recall quickly and make it coherent for the student's to understand. Many student's marvel at her ability to be a mother, Ph.D, wife, and functioning human being and always be so damn cheerful. I would recommend Frau Vandergriff for all German courses. The textbooks are, however, sometimes expensive and have little buyback value at the end of the semester because of the rotation of classes offered. The best thing to do is hold on to your textbooks or try and sell them @ the Textbook Exchange.

I audited Vandergriff's Conversational German class and really enjoyed it. She is talented at teaching beginning/intermediate students and utilized a variety of creative approaches to getting students talking and learning idiomatic expressions and the real pragmatics of conversation. She was unfailingly cheerful, and seemed to take a genuine interest in her students and their progress.

Professor Vandergriff is an okay teacher that comes to class and does what the syllabus says, however, students often left the class with a feeling of emptiness or not quite understanding the literature. Several graduate students were upset with Professor Vandergriff because she often gave out dates or information that was just plain WRONG. It matters to the Graduate students because they have to study for a graduate essay exam and they must know all of the information correctly. It did not help that Professor Vandergriff often gave out misinformation. In addition, students often realized that she does not have a "feel" for literature. Odd comments were sometimes made by her such as, "oh, I never really liked 'Werther.'" (this is not the best comment to make when students have come to class ready to discuss "Werther") Other than that, she does come to class and encourages discussion, but students are mainly perplexed by her sometimes strange comments and views.