Lauri is one of the best professors here at UCLA. She is very understanding, funny, and overall like a second mother. There is no way in hell you will be able to be distracted during her class; it is very engaging and participation is key. She is a fair grader.

I am selling the course reader. **********

Overall Lauri is a nice teacher she just expects so much from her students that it feels like you have to please her. I dreaded getting my grade for this class because it was literally a wild card you don't know how you're doing in the class because she doesn't let you see your grade. She says she knows we care about grades but that she doesn't believe in them and she just wants to see us improve and not care so much about the grade we have. She expects you to know the material and do the readings and watch the videos because there is a lot of in-class participation and group work that is due before class ends. There were a couple of times at the beginning of the quarter when I noticed she gave me attitude or was rude even though I didn't do anything or was simply trying to talk to her but that changed as she got to know me more and we talked one on one. She says she cares about her students a lot, so if she thinks you need extra help or guidance, she will let you know she wants to meet with you privately and talk about your work. In my opinion, she really wants to see you go out of your way to see how you're doing or get her opinion on your writing before you get into the essays. She can be very picky and would just go at every line and make you clarify or ask you questions about everything you talk about. She basically wants you to forget about everything you've already learned about writing and do things the way she liked. I cannot stress this enough, she will ask you to be VERY specific in your writing about literally everything. She doesn't like clichés or just writing to meet a word count. She wants to see you write about what you actually think of the material. She has very high expectations. At first, I thought she was too much but she really does want to see you and your writing improve. Everyone learns differently so take all of this into consideration before taking her class.

If you want an "easy A" then I don't recommend taking this class to satisfy your writing 1 requirement; Lauri, the professor, even mentioned in one of our lectures not to take this class if you are looking for an "easy A". Instead, she values the growth of a student's writing and places less emphasis on the grades they get for assignments. If she sees you grow, as both a writer and a speaker, she will grade you according to the immense growth she saw in you.

Coming into her class, I thought I was a good writer, but our first midterm essay showed me that I still had a lot to learn and improve. She also loves when you have scheduled office hours with her and will work with you to find not only the grammatical errors but also unnecessary phrasing or broad stroke ideas, which were problems I honestly was not aware of in my midterm essay. She has a great personality and is understanding and empathetic to the incoming freshmen who are getting used to college. Also, PARTICIPATION matters! if you have a problem with speaking in front of a class, maybe do not take this class. I was participating in her class constantly, and I kind of felt like my participation helped me get the grade I got because of what I brought to the table. If you can get out of your comfort zone, then you will see that participating in her class is actually quite fun!

She also does a quarterly topic that her class will focus on. My quarter's topic was the value of stand-up comedy, which was an unorthodox topic but was fascinating and cool to talk and discuss about. If you want to take her class, just be aware of the topic she is doing for the quarter as it could determine whether or not you want to take this class. And honestly, I feel like the different topics she does quarterly will affect how she teaches or instructs her class. For my quarter, we just watched a lot of Netflix shows and did a lot of in-class discussions about what we watched.

Would I recommend you take her class? Yes, if you do want to improve as a writer in your future courses at UCLA. Otherwise, I wouldn't take her class just because her grading is much more critical, and there are easier English teachers you can get an A in. Also, she doesn't have a grading rubric (b/c again, she doesn't value grades) so you are going in blind when doing your essays.

I'm not really sure why her classes have a super high rating. She didn't give us a rubric or any type of idea of how she wanted our essays to be written, so we basically wrote them blind. It's confusing because she'll tell us not to care about what grade we get because grades don't matter (even though they do?), and then when you ask her how she wants us to write our essays, she just tells us to write it the way we want to. The prompts are super vague too, so that doesn't help either. To put it over the top, she then grades your paper SUPER harshly (which makes no sense because why would you grade hard if you don't even give your students specific prompts and rubrics?). For my midterm essay, I made an appointment with her so that she could give me feedback, and even after fixing all the things she told me to fix (which were a lot of things btw because she gave me super harsh critiques), she still gave me a B on that paper. It was really frustrating. I also didn't even know what my grades were until final grades were posted, so the whole time I wasn't sure how I was doing in the class.

I also felt that she was a little passive-aggressive. She clearly had favorites. I advise anyone taking this course to just agree with everything she says and to not argue with her if you want her to like you. I noticed that the people that kissed up to her were the ones that were her favorites and got good grades on their essays.

If you're thinking of taking this class, I would choose another professor that is actually clear and specific about what they want out of your writing, and one that will actually post grades and won't mark you down for not agreeing with her opinions.

Lauri is really amazing. I am a freshman and EC3 was the first class I took at UCLA. I feel lucky to be able to spend the summer with Lauri. She is a professor willing to offer you as much advice as possible. During office hour, she is very patient and answers all the questions you have. She is really amazing!! I love her!

I want to keep in touch with her. If you really want to learn something and improve your writing skills instead of finding a "easy" professor and getting high gpa without any challenges, then take Lauri. She will challenge you, but the challenges push you forward.

Definitely a tough grader, and over analyzes papers, but i can say she improved my writing SO much. GO TO OFFICE HOURS! 3 papers, 3 one pg film responses and a 2 minute film presentation, class wasn't too bad. readings and essay topics weren't that bad, get more difficult but i'd definitely recommend her if you actually want to learn and don't focus so much on your grade. if you do all the work you should pass.

I absolutely love Lauri. I think she is terrific.
Before I took her class, some sophomore students told me that she was very hard to deal with. I also saw the comments below from my fellow Chinese saying that she was being harsh to international students. As a result, I almost dropped her class.
However, after a summer with Lauri, I am very happy that I didn't drop her class. She's been very helpful and the whole class loves her. She really helped me with my major writing problems. Besides, she is very sweet in person.

Conclusion: If you are looking for a class that you don't need much work on it or a gpa-guarateed class, I don't recommend you to take Lauri's class. But if you're ready to learn and to put effort to improve your writing, don't miss Lauri.

Lauri Mattenson was amazing. She is extremely concerned with her students and incredibly down to earth. If you have the chance to take a course with her in a small student setting, DO IT. Her teaching style is very different from traditional classes. She taught me how to write more critically, but also taught me to view my college experience in a different light than before. If you are looking for a professor that will make you work for your grade - but don't worry, you will enjoy working for it - then you should definitely take a class with her.

*I took HC 65W with her

Mattenson is an excellent teacher.
She is able to see the directions in which you can immediately improve and directions you can reach over time.
I initially resented that I was required to take this writing class, but it turned out to be one of my favorites. As well as I believed I already wrote, Lauri (as she asks you to call her) not only gave me notes that improved my writing in ways that had not occurred to me, but provided opportuities to stretch my writing creatively.

Look, most of what you'll be doing at UCLA is writing papers, so getting a quarter of training from Mattenson is one of the best favors you could do for yourself. She's also genuinely encouraging of her students to pay her visits during future quarters if they need help on papers for other classes. If you have the time to take her up on that, do it.

She's a very nice person and very attentive to each persons writing and particularly to their progress in the class.

She'll make you a better writer and it will be worth it.

不多说，歧视国际生，还想上么？