Noriko Omae - Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC

Professor: Noriko Omae

Department: Languages

College: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC

Rating # 1

Overview:

• Course: JAP101
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Terribly AWFUL

Rating # 2

Overview:

• Course: JAP101
• Grade Received: A+
• Overall Rating: 3.0
• Course Difficulty: 2.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

The way she taught was awesome, inspiring. You could actually improve your Japanese listening skills since she spoke basic Japanese phrases quite often. However, her textbooks were too much and not useful for learning grammar. So you would end up learning nothing from her course.

Rating # 3

Overview:

• Course: JAP100
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

Rude, unhelpful, and inappropriate in her behaviour. It takes no time to see how unprofessional she is... avoid her at all costs.

Rating # 4

Overview:

• Course: JAP100
• Grade Received: B+
• Overall Rating: 2.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

She uses her own textbooks that are filled with typos. And while she focuses more on practical Japanese over grammar, making it a bit easier, that won't fly once you advance to JAPN101 with another instructor. She pretty much left out 30-50% of the fundamental material you should've learned at a 100 level.

Rating # 5

Overview:

• Course: JAP100
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 3.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

awesome

Rating # 6

Overview:

• Course: JALANG101
• Grade Received: A
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Beautiful and inspiring with integrity

Rating # 7

Overview:

• Course: JAPN300
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 2.5
• Course Difficulty: 1.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

She is enthusiastic and is there to help if you ask. However, I feel like I didn't learn much from the class. Having taken preceding JAPN classes here, I feel like I learned more in the previous class than this one.. Seems easy enough to get a good grade. She grades by effort not so much 'ability' Textbook is used in class, but not examinable

Rating # 8

Overview:

• Course: ECON101
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Incredibly hard to understand and very unhelpful. Every one of her examples in class are nearly straight out of the textbook and her lessons are the same as the textbook just with less detail and way less clear language. Ontop of this she holds random pop quizez to ensure that you attend class and sit through her unless lectures. Not recommended.

Rating # 9

Overview:

• Course: JAP100
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Horrible...

Rating # 10

Overview:

• Course: JAP100
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Despite the fact that I got a decent grade, I view this professor as highly unprofessional and arrogant. She is using two textbooks, each 300-400 pages long and expect you to know a fair amount of it. Two first oral tests are jokers, but the final is "mission impossible" without any jokes. Take out lesson from it is "AVOID HER IF POSSIBLE".

Rating # 11

Overview:

• Course: JAPN100
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

She is the worst prof i have ever taken.

Rating # 12

Overview:

• Course: JAPN100
• Grade Received: A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

Don't take her class unless you have learned Japanese before. If you are a beginner who want to get good mark in her class, I suggest you find a tutor. Omae uses a textbook written by herself.It is terrible and has lots of mistake in it. She didn't teach grammar and explain vocabulary,you have to memorize everything in her textbook.

Rating # 13

Overview:

• Course: JAPN101
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

The trend of instructors is to use a unpublished textbook written by an instructor at school. The PDF book is divided into grammar and lessons; lessons are seemingly random in content, focused on Canadian oriented vocabulary. Because of the sheer volume of vocabulary and disjointed content the lessons often resort to fill-in-the blank work.

Rating # 14

Overview:

• Course: JAPN101
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Instruction time resorts to pushing students through fill-in-the-blank workbooks and partner oral work following strict guideline both of which discourages students to develop tangible skill. Instruction time all but ignores the grammar component which students are told to self-study outside of the class.

Rating # 15

Overview:

• Course: JAPN101
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

The textbook itself is laden typos and errors, and heavy in grammatically jargon ignoring the work of modern to simplify textbook formats such as those by Genki.

Rating # 16

Overview:

• Course: JAPN101
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Finally the format of the class is set up to have students fail. Midterms are oral exams, while the final exam is 3 hours of written work with zero oral content, which leaves students ill prepared and forced to scramble to memorize hundreds of disjointed vocabulary rather than focus of strengthening skills.

Rating # 17

Overview:

• Course: JAP100
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: Not Mandatory

Comment:

One terrible prof with bad temper and bad teaching. stay away from her at all costs. You will suffer. Also,the only way to get A in this course is to suck it up to her.

Rating # 18

Overview:

• Course: JAPN100
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 2.5
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

I've gotta say, she's one terrible prof. She doesn't have hard copy of the book and asks you to print it off from a bunch of scanned pdf files (tiff). It's a pain in.. You can bring laptop to class, but she said she hates it so there that. If you are taking her class, good luck finding the instructions. It's always not clear, so there you have it.

Rating # 19

Overview:

• Course: JAPN300
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 3.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

A little bit abrasive sometimes, but she's got it where it counts. She's very sharp, and her background in linguistics makes her feedback very nuanced. Put in the effort (attend all classes, put lots of work into assignments/projects/kanji etc.) and you will do well. She's been teaching since the early 80s, so laziness and winging it won't do.

Rating # 20

Overview:

• Course: JAP100
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 3.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Tough marker on the writing!! Speaks very fast on the orals, if you don't have previous background it is probably better off doing distance.