Learn Spanish: Basic Spanish Vocabulary
University of California, Davis · View on Coursera ↗
Taught by Dr. Robert Blake
Language Learning
About the course
Offered by University of California, Davis. Learn Spanish. Build a working vocabulary of 1,500 of the most used words and phrases. Enroll for free.
The dissent
The most-upvoted critical review (57 votes, 1.0★).
“This course is sadly very frustrating and I have had Spanish and French previously. I don't know how anyone with no Spanish experience would be able to finish the first week's worth of lessons without a lot of outside help and reference. I would expect that a course such as this would have all the reference you'd need to help you translate the material for the practice sessions. It seems like the reference and the practice were created at different times without any continuity. I have dropped this course and will continue with my other audio course.”
Coursera's 4.5 comes from 4,558 ratings. Of those, 5.2% are 1–2★.
Starisk reads the reviews learners voted most helpful, and weights each by the square root of its votes: a review with 80 upvotes counts about five times one with 2. Unvoted reviews are not skipped out of laziness — by this model they carry no evidence that other students endorsed them.
That measures what the most-endorsed reviews say, not “true quality.” The rating distribution above is the whole population, so you can see the sample next to it.
Reviews read on 23 Oct 2026.Read them on Coursera ↗