Martinez, William  

Dr. Martinez is very hard and expects a lot, but homework was 30% of the grade. Warning, the homework can take 10-12 hours per assignment. The take-home test was straight from homework, readings and lectures. The project is from the literary theory you pick and is very difficult. The short paper isn't too bad, but the final paper is very hard. This class has TOO MUCH READING on dry, boring, difficult topics. A lot of work, but I discovered an A- is possible.

good.

Dr. Martinez is a challenging teacher. To go from SPAN 124 to his 233 class was insane. I realized that my Spanish wasn't as good as I thought it was, and b/c of that, lectures were difficult. And, I couldn't grasp everything he was saying. But, my Spanish did improve over the quarter, and I learned to appreciate Hispanic poetry. It sometimed seemed as though he wasn't taking into consideration that there were more than just native speakers in the class, b/c the non-natives were confused much of the time. Just be warned that unless you're a native speaker, it will be a hard class with the lectures spoken all in Spanish at 100mph.

Best class I have ever taken but be prepaired to work hard.

Dr. Martinez is truly a good teacher if your willing to put the time in. His lectures are entertaining and class flies by. It is a lot of work and its all in spanish (class too) but if you do the reading before every class, pay attention, take good notes and study befoer the tests youll be fine. Lotta work, but youll learn a ton and your spanish will improve a lot too.

Dr. Martinez is a very smart, cultured man. He is the best SPAN 233 teacher at Cal Poly. He teaches about the important people in Latin American history that you will need to know and reference in your later classes. Although he pushes you hard with reading, essays, and quizzes, it's all for a good cause. His class improved my ability to read and analyze Spanish works. I had him for X302 also. It was an experimental class at the time, so it needed some work, but overall it was a good way to practice using the Spanish language, since we can't all do it so readily in class with the teacher lecturing the whole time. Overall, great teacher!

He pretty much can be sumed up by describing him with two fateful words that can not leave my mind when I see that cute little round face with the sweetest bowl haircut since I had mine in 2nd grade, Pinche Chicano Park.

Martinez appears to know what he is talking about, but quite often he is making stuff up. It worries me how long he has been incorrectly teaching these stories for. He contradicts himself on quizzes, and don't even try to reconcile your grade because he will most likely not listen to you.

I realllly surprisingly liked this class. I know students who didnt speak great spanish and couldnt understand great spanish had difficulty, which is understandable, though he really had a beautiful, clear accent. Readings were interesting and he pretty much spelled out everything you needed to get from them. I almost never did the reading before hand since we talked about almost all of them (sometimes not with the poems b/c there wre to many) in class in great detail. You just need to know what is going on with the reading, not really understand the deeper meaning since he tells you what he wants you to know. Take great notes because he asks questions exactly on things he said in class. like what does her dress color mean....etc. quizzes were kinda hard, though i never studied for them, and the tests were reasonable. overall, great class and id take him again.

One of the best teachers I have ever had. He really inspires students to perform to their maximum potential. He can come off as a bit intimidating, but he is very helpful, freindly and nice. Good teacher, Good Man.

Span 301 was easy. The only reason I got a B was that I had the wrong edition of the book. Anyways, as long as you make the grammar changes on your rough drafts and change about a one sentence in each of your paragraphs around, he'll hive you high As on the final drafts. Class is easy. Martinez was amusing at first, but lost his charm halfway through the quarter. Hes ok though, take his class. Just dont expect anything great.

Dr. Martinez is AMAZING! Honestly, if you go to class, participate, and try to be enthusiastic, you will do well in his classes. He is so incredibly helpful during and outside of class. Visit him in his office and get to know him better. Try not to have that I-am-only-coming-to-your-office-to-boost-my-grade attitude. He won\'t take kindly to that. If you act like you care about the Spanish language and you\'re really trying hard he will give you the grade you want. Also, he has an amazing collection of books and is so knowledgeable. Take his class!

Dr. Martinez is such a jerk. I have never met a more asinine professor at this school. Spanish is my talent and part of my major and he made me feel like an absolute idiot. He is unclear about homework, when it is due, and what is required and it is not just because we speak Spanish in the class (which I understood perfectly). He is annoying and gives pointless lectures. The man is so intimidating that he made me cry one day which I have never done because of a teacher; he had an outrageous technicality in an assignment that over half of the class fell victim to. My grade dropped an entire letter because of this. The man badmouths his students for sure. Bottom line he is an ass who picks favorites and his class is a waste. I wouldn\'t have taken it if I didn\'t have to.

Martinez is a good teacher overall. I enjoyed his class and could have done better had I not been busy doing a ridiculous amount of assignments for Karen's SPAN 301 which caused me to just not do a lot of the stuff for his class. So the C I got was totally my fault and a better grade is very attainable in his class. The one gripe I have is that I was graded down because the title of my big presentation was not a real word according to him. I tried to tell him it was but it wasn't until I sent him an email with numerous sources cited including the Royal Academic Spanish Dictionary that he would admit it was actually a real word.

Martinez is a great professor. He made us work our asses off writing papers but I learned a butt-load. I think we had four papers (3 pages each), a midterm, two quizzes, a speech, and a final paper (7-9 pages). It was deinitely a lot of work but it paid off. I'm now done with my Spanish minor. Good luck.

Dr. Martinez once again worked us very hard, but taught a tremendous amount to those of us who knew nothing about Mexican History and Culture. There were 5 quizzes on which you choose 5 from 8 possible short answer questions. These topics would be names of places, people, important dates or cultural items such as gods, sacred artifacts, holidays etc. that were mentioned in the reading or lecture. There were 2 midterms and a final that were multiple choice and essay (again choose say 2 from 4) and true/false questions. True/false could be very trickey if you weren't paying attention. We also had a 6 page research paper or lesson plan which we had all quarter to work on about anything related to Mexican culture that was not discussed in class. The class was always stimulating and left your hand tired from writing several pages of notes. You might want to bring a tape recorder and take notes. He often passed around artifacts from his own private collection for the students to see and handle. Be sure to keep up on the TON of reading if you want an A. To get a B or C only show up to lecture everyday and pay VERY close attention. If you're looking for an easy class, don't take this one. If you want to learn, come on in. Also, Dr. Martinez is generally very open to your opinions, but there are times he becomes very stubborn about his idea is right, so make sure you have your facts to back you up. He is VERY helpful in office hours and VERY available if you need to make an appoinment with him. A warning though: there are no "quick" questions so come when you have at least a half hour to discuss the problem.

This was by far the hardest class I have ever taken. I learned a lot and it was all very interesting but quite frankly is wasn't worth the stress. Prof Martinez certainly knows his subject but he lectures way to fast. I would literally leave his class with a bad hand cramp because he talked so fast. The reading is what really did me in. There is a text book(we were supposed to read basically the entire thing), there was another book which was philosophy and very difficult to understand and then there were some articles in the library which were all very, very long. We had 5 quizzes (drop the lowest score, 2 exams, and a paper. Martinez is a nice guy and the class was interesting but, for me, it wasn't worth all the stress just for a GE class.

Wow where can I start. This guy is a real horses ass. I remember one of the first days of class he came and attempted to collect a homework assignment. Except the entire class, literally the entire class, didn't do it because he never told us to. Instead of being a reasonable human being and realizing he made a mistake, he gave us all zeroes. WOW! He marked me down on a test for an apparent wrong answer. I showed him the answer, verbatim, out of the text book he supposedly penned and even then he just said ok and didn't make any notes so I'm sure he didn't correct my grade. He can't stand being wrong and his hubris is unreal. For a guy who, based on appearance, should be extremely humble, he thinks he was sculpted (or rather piled together) by Zeus. Furthermore, I know he badmouths his students. I can't stand people like this so I was rather vocal about my problems with him. He spread rumors about me, which I later heard from my adviser, throughout the faculty. I got an A in this class only out of my personal enjoyment for the class. I loved snubbing him because I didn't do much homework but killed his tests. Don't take this dickhead unless you have to

Martinez is the worst teacher I have ever encountered on getting back to you. I called him twice, wrote an email three times and left a note with his secretary, but he never responded. The books he choose weren't great, especially The House on Mango Street. He grades fairly hard, but it's easy to pass if you turn in the essays. He expects you to know little details about the stories, like what color is associated with a Voodoo deity. Also, every single book had stereotypes of men being unfaithful, abusive and untrustworthy. If it was just a couple of them, it would be understandable. However, they all had this theme.

This was one of the worst professors I have ever had. He was so boring and seemed racist to Americans. He graded essays like an English teacher would and expected us to remember minor details about the anti white, anti men books we had to read. His lectures made me fall asleep every day and he takes way too much time to make his points. He litreally had a few lectures where he voiced his opinion on how the white man has kept the Latino race down and how bad Americans were back in the day and how it hasn't changed still. This guy sucks, don't take him if you can aviod it.

Probably one of the worst professors I have ever had. I had better and less pretentious teachers at Cuesta College! Boring, biassed. His lectures unsinspiring with no room for debate! Don't take him!!!

Dr. Martinez once again proved his awesome ability to be patient and ever helpful as my Senior Project advisor. He was almost always available, outside of office hours as I had class during his office hours and was always patient and quick in correcting my mistakes in the translation. Whenever I didn't understand why something was corrected a certain way, he would explain it to me or refer me to a resource such as another dictionary or a Spanish grammer book. He is definitely the person to ask if you don't know where to find a resource regarding the language, culture or literature. Highly recommend him to anyone willing to work hard and come to office hours frequently and willing to learn.

Dr. Martinez is very enthusiastic about Language, Liturature and Creative Writing. He made us pick our project the first week of classes, which was a bit overwhelming. He also had several "mini" projects throughout the quarter that were to practice a certain type of writing I suppose, but because they were not announced ahead of time, they cut into the project time considerably. The project was a chapter of a novel, a collection of short stories, a collection of (15+) poems, or a theater piece. If it wasn't poetry, you had to have 3000+ words. The hard part was that it had to be all on the same theme. We had first rough draft, critique, second rough draft, critique and final project. I enjoyed the class, but it is hard work and not for lazy people. You are writing or thinking about the project every day. Dr. Martinez seemed fair but hard in his grading. The one thing I didn't like about the course was that there were times when he insisted that a piece that I was working on was focusing on a certain aspect and I felt that it was headed in another direction. He would get all excited and have many ideas in that vein, but it led away from the original meaning of the text. I learned to take some advice and discard other advice and then the class went well. I actually got an A- which is a little different from an A at Poly.

BOYCOTT!!!