Elementary Swedish I/Elementary Swedish II

I cannot warn anyone strongly enough against taking a class with Verne Moberg. There is not a single redeeming thing to be said about her style of instruction or general disposition. I will address both in that order.

Verne Moberg teaches through fear and abuse. This might be acceptable if she had anything worthwhile to say about her material, but alas, she does not. More often than not, her classes consisted of busy work like videos or reading the texts assigned as homework aloud. She also enjoyed berating students for anything she perceived to be an error in pronunciation or grammar, even when she could be proven wrong. Indeed, her style of lecturing consists of identifying all the ways in which she is superior to you, and then berating the students until you are forced to agree. In terms of a language class, she offered no more insight than if I had read the assigned books at home.

I cannot imagine anyone who could find her behavior charming. Verne Moberg is extraordinarily critical and perhaps the surliest person I have ever met. She is also utterly unpredictable: you might be speaking pleasantly for the first hour of a class, until suddenly she turns on you and tries to embarrass you in front of your classmates. Do not make the mistake, however, of assuming that these are just “moods.” Verne Moberg seems to have a photographic memory for every slight she has ever suffered: real or perceived. She will never forgive your transgressions against her sense of propriety. These will affect your grade, and there is no way to fix them.

There is no way to win with Verne Moberg. You cannot make her like you, so do not even try. She already hates you. She has nothing to say about the material she offers her students and covers this by attempting her embarrass her students at every turn. This should strike you as behavior best left for kindergarten, yet it is actively permitted within Columbia’s Germanic Languages Department.

Take this class only at your own risk.

DO NOT TAKE THIS COURSE unless you don't care about grades and really want to learn the language. Everything said below is true. She is mean-spirited, even cruel, and completely unpredictable. This course was a constant source of dread for me as she is an incredible pain to work with, rude, and in general eager to pull you down to her miserable state. I am usually a pretty positive person I think, but this class brought me down in every way. It is amazing that my love of the Swedish language has survived her merciless grasp. By the end I was completely burnt out by her ridiculous demands, and if I sound bitter it's because I am. I'M TRYING TO SAVE YOU FROM THIS STATE. She's awful to say the least. Most of the class time was a complete waste. Instead of drilling vocabulary or doing exercises or even speaking in the language, she just tells a story in Swedish and you stare blankly with no idea what's been said, and then she repeats it in English. If you're up for an unhappy and hateful woman with a few experiences to fill the two hours every other day with story-time, by all means. Go for it.

I took elementary Swedish I as an elective for fun (what a bad idea). Despite it being an elective I still wholeheartedly wanted to learn some Swedish...I figured one semester could provide me with a small, but decent amount of knowledge. Alas, I could not achieve that. The biggest problem is the textbook and accompanying word list book (dictionary). The former is horrible, not one word of English and extremely disorganized. I mean normally a language text presents blocks of new vocabulary and even if it does not define them in English, at the very least presents the words with the gender, but not this book. As for the "dictionary", it too leaves something to be desired in that it is Swedish-English. This is just crazy! OK, so I said the problems with the book, which are truly detrimental to one's learning, but I have not gotten to the true source of this class' problem-the professor.

I agree with just about all the posts which adress her attitude. As for the others, they were obviously blinded by her because she took well to them. Chances are you will not be among her few favorite students and if you are not, be prepared to feel horrible for 2 hours twice a week. She makes you feel like you have to "tip-toe through the tulips"! Asking for how something is spelled, or to repeat something is often met with a scowling reply. Most language programs present new grammar/vocabulary and then work with it specifically for a couple of classes, even writing out genders or verb forms on the board so you get a complete learning of these new words. This never happens in this class! You may even get things wrong on the quizzes (i never saw 5-8 page quizzes before this class) that were just a word read once in class. Seriously, if one of the paragraphs we read had a word even that we never see anywhere else, you better learn it. This is very difficult since we are called on to translate and guess for much of that, then when she lets us know the ones we miss, it is very hard to write down notes if you are the one translating. God forbid you take a moment to do this in front of this impatient woman. Another thing about these quizzes: while we are given study guides, you do not get tested for the material in a straight forward way. For example, when we got tested on new prepositions we were not just asked something simple like what is between in Swedish, but rather had sentences with some words we never saw before (or atleast never explicitly taught) with blanks where we could chooses prepositions from a list to fill in with. Anyway, I could go on and on how I hate this class, but it will just make too long of a post. Bottom line is this woman should not be a professor (of a language course at least).