Jody Doran

Professor Doran was sometimes a bit stern, but she was a good professor overall and I learned in her class. Be sure to do her daily readings to participate in class and put effort into the essays and projects.

4/24/2025

I took the class for heritage speakers which means we all are pretty fluent in Spanish so it was definitely my easiest class of the semester. Doran is super sweet and friendly, but her grading doesn't make much sense at times. There isn't a rubric that she follows, so she kind of just assigns you a random grade most of the time on the papers.

12/21/2024

6-8 hrs/week

The class was not terrible. I do recommend a decently strong Spanish background as the class talks about linguistics which is already a tough subject in Spanish...

6/4/2024

2 or less hrs/week

I struggled in this class without any linguistics knowledge. There probably should be a pre requisite! Lectures were very very dry and tests were HARD.

5/22/2024

Fantastic professor. She explains concepts clearly, notifies about upcoming assignments, and grades fairly. SHe is a very pleasant professor despite the class being a lot of new and challenging material. Prof. Doran makes it seem less stressful.

10/11/2023

Prof is friendly and I think she truly cares about the subject but lectures are very dry and confusing. The textbook isn't much help either. Tests were quite hard and often left most of the class feeling pretty upset. Having previous exposure to linguistics would be very helpful.

1/5/2023

Coming from a well-prepared Spanish background, the class was pretty much what I expected it to be. It is a very reading-intensive course and although the material wasn't the most interesting to me, Profa. Doran is a very nice person who is a relatively lenient grader. Although she rarely gives 95+ on big assignments, she is not as strict as others

12/23/2022

I highly disagree with a lot of the reviews for Prof. Doran. I thought she was lovely. I thought her course was interesting, challenging, and fair. Yes, you had to go to class. Yes, you had to understand the material and demonstrate that. We had several take home exams, ungraded homework assignments, assigned readings, and a few group projects.

8/16/2022

Doran is not by any means a bad professor. She is typically congenial and nice, but sometimes I think her grading is a bit harsh. She will give a 90-95% on any assignment that is near perfect, but not provide feedback on why she took off points; this makes getting above the 93% A mark a bit difficult. Participate 3-4 times per class.

5/6/2022

Although Professor Doran is very kind and clearly cares about her students, her class is ridiculously difficult and the tests/projects take an ungodly amount of time and effort to complete. The material is very confusing and tested very in-depth on. She is extremely nice, but I would never recommend taking this difficult of a Spanish class.

5/3/2022

Professor Doran was my elementary spanish professor, and coming into this class, I thought I wouldn't have to know much spansih, but she does not warn you of this. She lectures on all of the easy parts of grammar but when the quizzes come she will test you on material she has never gone over. For an elementary class this was very difficult.

12/8/2021

She's not a great lecturer and doesn't explain the material well. She is also a relatively tough grader. AVOID.

12/31/2015

doesn't speak loud, slow or clear enough. If you want to have a solid foundation in Spanish don't take her. She tends to be used to teaching upper level classes and expects you to know the alphabet and pronunciations by yourself. Hard-grader, pretty dogmatic about the trivia.

1/29/2014

She used to teach upper level classes so if you are a total beginner and want to have a solid foundation in Spanish don't take her. She expects you to know the alphabet, the pronunciations( including those exceptions) by yourself. Quite dogmatic, deducts essay points for margin requirement; asks you to leave the room if you have soup before class.

1/29/2014