Polyratings.com: Battenburg, John

Home Professor Search Professor List Evaluate a Professor About Us Contact Us

Battenburg, John

Cumulative GPA: 3.60/4.00 with 10 evaluations
Presents Material Clearly: 3.60
Recognizes Student Difficulties: 3.10

English Department, Cal Poly, SLO
Full Statistical Analysis
Evaluate This Professor

ENGL 290 5th Year Senior Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 2:47 pm, Dec 30, 2009 Report Evaluation		Dr. Battenburg is an excellent instructor who can take material that anyone other than English majors would find tedious and make it interesting, relevant and fun. He is passionate about the material and will help any student who needs it. I 100% recommend him.

ENGL 546 Senior Grade Earned: A General Ed 7:08 am, Mar 10, 2008 Report Evaluation		he rocks and he has an awesome name and my proffesor friend dan hawthorne likes his ass!

ENGL 340 Senior Grade Earned: A General Ed 8:41 pm, Feb 12, 2008 Report Evaluation		This course required more reading than other classes just by virtue of it being a lit class. So if you are looking for a class that doesn't require alot of prep time, this is not for you. However, if you keep up with the readings, taking this class with Prof Battenburg is a pleasure. He is well rounded in many areas of life and he relates the material to our life today. He makes the puritans and the writers that you read about in this course, come to life. He makes you know them as if they were old friend or family members of yours. Eventhough I am not an appreciator of lit, taking this course with Prof Battenburg made me look forward to the classes. He gives you clear outline of the syllabus and you sort of know what he'd be testing you on for the tests. If you prepare well and pay attention to his hints during class and the topics he emphasizes, you'll get an A. Most important for your performance however is that you read the material before class. He is not going to spoon feed you the material. You got to do your job and be ready for class discussion about the material. I highly recommend taking the class with Prof Battenburg. He is the best!

ENGL 290 Junior Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 3:33 am, Oct 28, 2007 Report Evaluation		After taking his class, I immediately turned in the paperwork to get a linguistics minor. I was always excited to go to this class, and had tons of fun every time I went. He is witty, clear, and organized. The material is fascinating and pretty simple to understand. He is approachable and willing to help you with any problem you may have. Amazing guy. Take him if you get a chance.

ENGL 290 Senior Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 8:15 am, Aug 10, 2007 Report Evaluation		Dr. Battenburg is one of my favorite professors at Cal Poly. He was incredibly interesting as a lecturer and made linguistics so fascinating to me that I decided to be a linguistics minor. He is also funny and witty. He presented everything clearly. There were no surprises on the test. You knew exactly what was coming based on his clear powerpoints and lectures. He expects you to participate, which is not at all difficult, and, rather, makes the class all the more enjoyable. He is excellent, excellent, excellent. I am going to take him again in the fall.

ENGL 290 Junior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 9:41 pm, Jan 6, 2003 Report Evaluation		I really liked Dr. Battenburg. He was a good, funny professor that made a dry subject such as linguistics very tolerable. He wasn't much help on the homework which seemed to be his only flaw. FOLLOW HIS CLASS OUTLINE CLOSELY AND TAKE CLOSE NOTES ON ANYTHING ON THE OUTLINE. If you do this you will do good on the test. Take this teacher if you get the chance.

ENGL 290 Junior Grade Earned: N/A Required (Support) 1:35 pm, Nov 21, 2002 Report Evaluation		Dr. Battenburg was an awfull teacher. He was very unclear in how he lectured and made it really hard to take notes; he jumped all over the place. He was also very unwilling to help the students when they had questions or problems. I thought linguistics would be fun until the end of the 2nd week of class. When he gave homework out he assigned it monday for wednesday's class instead of giving us the weekend to do it. we had classes twice a week and so he would tell us on wednesday that he was going to assign homework on the following monday. Then, after we turned in the homework and asked him to go over it because it was very difficult, he told us that that was why he assigned it, to challenge us! Gee, thanks for trying to help us understand the material. Unless you want to struggle through a semester, I do not recommend taking Battenburg!!!



ENGL 290 Senior Grade Earned: A Elective 4:12 pm, Dec 25, 2001 Report Evaluation		Wow! Dr. Battenburg is an excellent teacher. He is well prepared and knows so much about the class. In Linguistics, the beginning is a bit challenging because you have to learn the phonetic alphabet, but it is important for the rest of the course. I really liked the text that he chose for the class. I came into this class, thinking that later on in life I might pursue a PhD in Linguistics, Dr. Battenburg was able to further my interest in the subject area, and make realize which parts I like, and which parts I don't like. Dr. Battenburg has a great sense of humor, but is not a teacher that spends all the time trying to be funny, he gets down to the nitty gritty, and teaches the nuts and bolts, but he also uses the Socratic method and gets the class involved. He asks the students lots of questions, and keeps you on your toes. He will call on you if you're not paying attention. His class is structured so that your grade is not entirely dependent on the exams, of which there are two. They are pretty difficult tests, and they rely completely on the notes, and the text. He will make it clear what areas to know without giving you the answers, so study those. He graded on a curve for our first midterm, because the test was so difficult, and judging by how I felt after the final, and the grade I think that he had to do the same. Also, watch out when dates are involved, he pulled a surprise on me, but it is highly possible that I was not paying attention in class when he warned us of it. The history of the English language would be the subject to know the dates of for this class. To top it off, the class was in the multi-media room, and he used the computer to teach us from. He has such a good website, that you really can spend hours upon hours browsing over the information out of pure interest. The best thing about Dr. Battenburg, is that he was always able to answer the class's questions, and he had such a passion for the subject matter, but yet he wasn't a geek like all of the Linguists in the movies that he showed us were. Oh, the movies were really interesting, when one is scheduled, I would highly recommend coming to class. All in all, A +++ to Dr. Battenburg, he is worth taking for Linguistics, and I would definately sign up for any of his other classes if I needed to do so.

ENGL 290 Sophomore Grade Earned: B Required (Support) 4:08 pm, Apr 4, 2001 Report Evaluation		Prof. Battenburg is awesome. I highly recommend him for any courses. He teaches very clearly and drops in numerous jokes along the way. I was completely uninterested in Linguistics before his class, but it was really fun and interesting. Battenburg is extreemly smart and his tests were very reasonable. Study the notes from in class and you'll do fine.

ENGL 449 Freshman Grade Earned: B Elective 12:38 am, Jun 17, 2000 Report Evaluation		Professor Battenburg is an excellent English teacher, and has a great deal of insight towards Hawthorne and Melville's works (probably more, but I can't speak from experience). His lectures are interesting and often amusing, and class participation is encouraged. The course was fun and not too difficult, though one should watch the reading schedule (page numbers, in particular) with a wary eye. Showing up and participating is the bulk of the grade, especially since you'll get ideas for writing the critical paper (a large portion of the actual point value), and for the one presentation in the course. In the unlikely event that you're an engineering major, be advised that some quips and/or amusing anecdotes may be directed your way. Great professor, and one everyone will surely get along with and enjoy.

	Home Go Back Professor List Professor Search