Professor Bloom is a great teacher. I had him for Intermediate I and then Compo&Convo. I'll review Compo&Convo since other people have covered Intermediate I.
It's a very nice class. You have three 'units'. The first was reading a novel (Bonjour Tristesse) and then discussing it in class. It's sort of like a warm up unit. You talk all the time during class, and have discussions. It's very nice and comforting, and he is a very 'chill' professor, very sweet, very nice and doesn't intimidate you. It is a relaxing atmosphere to just talk. He assigns people to prepare stuff for each class, so like one person will sign up as the "presenter" and will talk about what they noticed and start the discussion. He uses the courseworks discussion board so that the people can post their observations & question about that day's reading. He prints out the discussion board the day of class, and he has the presenter talk and then read through the discussions. People will talk about what they wrote, or comment on other people's work. Then you have someone that does the vocab, and finds about 7 words that they didn't know/feel is important to know for the reading, and you send that list to him. He also prints the list out.
The second unit is on current events, like France's problem with xenophobia, issues in "la banlieue", French schooling, the French version of "satire" and what is satire or what is not satire and crosses that line of offensive, things like that. The third unit was reading French thinkers, and their work that discusses New York. So like, Sartre, Baudrillard, Simon de Beauvoir, etc.
There are two or three vocab quizzes, based on the vocab lists made by your peers. Very straight forward, and they have wordbanks and you fill in the correct form in the sentences provided. There are also 3 in class essays, that he provides the prompts for like a week in advance, and then you have a week to rewrite the essay for a higher grade after he hands back the corrections. Then there's two or three take-home essays, where you don't rewrite those and you hand them in. Every week there's a journal that you write of about less than 500 words about whatever you want. Literally. Just as long as you write something, it's good. He grades these with check marks. The more interesting the topic and the better your use of French, the higher the number of checks. I remember getting four checks once, on a journal I wrote about the relationship between étrange and étranger. I also once wrote an essay about my cats and got like three checks on that as well, so your topics can be silly or serious, as long as you edit them for misspellings and grammer and things of that nature. During the second unit when we discussed satire, he assigned a newspaper/journal/television program (1 'program' per 2 people, but you could both decide if you wanted to work alone or together. Alone you had a shorter presentation, together it would be slightly longer.). You would research the program and then give a little mini presentation.
A lot of your grade is dependent upon your participation but don't worry! He uses your journals, the discussion posts and in class talking to determine that grade. The presentations also go toward participation grade.
Overall, a fun class. It's very relaxed, and Professor Bloom is not trying to fail you. He is a nice grader, and he takes the revised grade of your essay instead of the original or a combination of the two, so you get a higher grade. Also the vocab quizzes are easy to do well on. Very hard not to get an A, or even an A+ in this class.