LING 103
Introduction to General Phonetics
Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Enforced requisite: course 20 with grade of B- or better. Phonetics of variety of languages and phonetic phenomena that occur in languages of world. Extensive practice in perception and production of such phenomena. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2022 - The workload of Ling 103 is heavy, at least for me. The grade consists of several parts. The most important part is "skill mastery", which accounts of 60% of your final grade. In order to earn full credit of this activity, you'd better do the quizzes every week. Dr. Bell introduces new materials every week. The corresponding exercises will be posted on CCLE accordingly, through which you can practice, review and preview the content learnt in class. There is specific requirement for each skill. For example, you might need 10 points for "transcribe vowel" to master the skill. If you have already earned 10 points, you can stop doing it and focus on other skills. It's clear and flexible. You might find it confusing of this assignment, but Dr. Bell will give an Excel form after the midterm. You can use the form to calculate your scores, which is very convenient. I recommend you to pay attention to the examples shown in the slides or in class, which might be shown up in the quizzes. Also, try to earn more points asap because there is also a term paper, which might drive you crazy at the end of the quarter. The term paper accounts for 22%, and it's done throughout the quarter. Its main purpose is to ask you to analyze a language that you don't know. It's broken down into 4 parts: the preliminary report (1%, mostly info about the language and your consultant); the word list (no credit, basically words from the language); recording script and annotated textgrid; and the final paper (22%). I recommend that you follow the instruction whenever Dr. Bell announces a new task. Otherwise you will find yourselves in shortage of time at the end since you have to wrap up the skill mastery, write the paper, and also prepare for the production task. The production skill is like an examination of what you have learnt throughout the quarter. It asks you to read 8-10 random or make-up IPA symbols, and you're done. The real exam is very quick to be honest, but you definitely have to know all the IPA symbols and how they are produced. There is only 10min for preparation, but our TA allows us to say it several time if we're uncertain about the pronunciation. Only the last one will be graded, which is very nice. This production task worths 15%. Dr. Bell encourages us to participate more, so there is also a participation score 1%. She also provides extra credits 2%. Dr. Bell is nice, patient, and supportive. Her lectures and slides are very neat and easy-understood. She also cares about her students and how well they do in class. If you have any concerns or questions, you're very welcome to say it in class. If you're not that kind of person, there are other methods you can share your thoughts. The shared google doc is a good one for me. Dr. Bell will post the link of the google doc in class, where everyone can share their thoughts. Also, Dr. Bell encourages us go to her office office or send her email if we need help. Even though I never went to the office hours, I feel like she cares about us. By the way, she really respects everyone in class. This class is supposed to be held online for the first 6 weeks and switch to in-person for the rest of the quarter. Dr. Bell sent us a questionnaire and ask everyone how they think. I really appreciates her for taking care of us. So, the workload is heavy and I do feel exhausted at the end of the quarter. I think this course is challenging, but if you are willing to devote your time and energy, plan ahead, follow the instructions, you should be fine.
Winter 2022 - The workload of Ling 103 is heavy, at least for me. The grade consists of several parts. The most important part is "skill mastery", which accounts of 60% of your final grade. In order to earn full credit of this activity, you'd better do the quizzes every week. Dr. Bell introduces new materials every week. The corresponding exercises will be posted on CCLE accordingly, through which you can practice, review and preview the content learnt in class. There is specific requirement for each skill. For example, you might need 10 points for "transcribe vowel" to master the skill. If you have already earned 10 points, you can stop doing it and focus on other skills. It's clear and flexible. You might find it confusing of this assignment, but Dr. Bell will give an Excel form after the midterm. You can use the form to calculate your scores, which is very convenient. I recommend you to pay attention to the examples shown in the slides or in class, which might be shown up in the quizzes. Also, try to earn more points asap because there is also a term paper, which might drive you crazy at the end of the quarter. The term paper accounts for 22%, and it's done throughout the quarter. Its main purpose is to ask you to analyze a language that you don't know. It's broken down into 4 parts: the preliminary report (1%, mostly info about the language and your consultant); the word list (no credit, basically words from the language); recording script and annotated textgrid; and the final paper (22%). I recommend that you follow the instruction whenever Dr. Bell announces a new task. Otherwise you will find yourselves in shortage of time at the end since you have to wrap up the skill mastery, write the paper, and also prepare for the production task. The production skill is like an examination of what you have learnt throughout the quarter. It asks you to read 8-10 random or make-up IPA symbols, and you're done. The real exam is very quick to be honest, but you definitely have to know all the IPA symbols and how they are produced. There is only 10min for preparation, but our TA allows us to say it several time if we're uncertain about the pronunciation. Only the last one will be graded, which is very nice. This production task worths 15%. Dr. Bell encourages us to participate more, so there is also a participation score 1%. She also provides extra credits 2%. Dr. Bell is nice, patient, and supportive. Her lectures and slides are very neat and easy-understood. She also cares about her students and how well they do in class. If you have any concerns or questions, you're very welcome to say it in class. If you're not that kind of person, there are other methods you can share your thoughts. The shared google doc is a good one for me. Dr. Bell will post the link of the google doc in class, where everyone can share their thoughts. Also, Dr. Bell encourages us go to her office office or send her email if we need help. Even though I never went to the office hours, I feel like she cares about us. By the way, she really respects everyone in class. This class is supposed to be held online for the first 6 weeks and switch to in-person for the rest of the quarter. Dr. Bell sent us a questionnaire and ask everyone how they think. I really appreciates her for taking care of us. So, the workload is heavy and I do feel exhausted at the end of the quarter. I think this course is challenging, but if you are willing to devote your time and energy, plan ahead, follow the instructions, you should be fine.
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Fall 2019 - This class was interesting but actually very hard. In my opinion Professor Faytak expected a lot (maybe too much) out of us for people who hadn't had any phonetics training prior to this course. The production exam was okay, but I found the transcription exam to be very hard. The course also has a paper, and Professor Faytak was very unclear when it came to how it was graded - he basically said that it would be different for every language, which you can imagine was unhelpful. Definitely go to office hours frequently, I think it made him like me a lot more and ultimately contributed to him possibly bumping me. I really liked him and the class was fun but I think unnecessarily difficult.
Fall 2019 - This class was interesting but actually very hard. In my opinion Professor Faytak expected a lot (maybe too much) out of us for people who hadn't had any phonetics training prior to this course. The production exam was okay, but I found the transcription exam to be very hard. The course also has a paper, and Professor Faytak was very unclear when it came to how it was graded - he basically said that it would be different for every language, which you can imagine was unhelpful. Definitely go to office hours frequently, I think it made him like me a lot more and ultimately contributed to him possibly bumping me. I really liked him and the class was fun but I think unnecessarily difficult.
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Fall 2022 - LECTURE + DISCUSSION Lecture was definitely a weak spot of the class. Professor Jun lectures using handouts instead of slides. She repeats the material on these handouts in extreme detail and gives lots of supplemental examples which is great. But, she speaks very quietly and her microphone isn't that great so if you are sitting in the back half of the class sometimes you just don't hear her. Discussion is once a week and you practice the material you learned in lecture that week. The workload for this class was definitely manageable until around Week 7/8 (also when the strikes hit). There is a point where you're simultaneously studying production, transcription, spectrograms, and writing your final paper at the same time. There were many moving parts and you really can't slack on any aspect. Professor Jun was very accommodating and ended up extending our paper's due date. Even though this class was very challenging at times, it really confirmed my interest in my major and I learned A LOT... HOMEWORK The homework points in this class is definitely used to pad for some of the more challenging assignments. There were 3 assignments in total. Usually consisting of a ~20 question BruinLearn quiz with three attempts and sometimes a written submission. EXAMS There was a midterm week 6 and one "quiz" week 10. The midterm covered all of the material learned up until that point. The average was 18.1/22. The final quiz only covered spectrographs, the average was 5.2/7. At both exams there was also a transcription test. Jun's exams are definitely very challenging and require an extensive understanding of IPA. PROJECT The final project is spaced out throughout the quarter. You choose a language you are unfamiliar with and find a speaker and do a detailed phonetic analysis. The language you choose is so important. Make sure the sound system isn't simple or too complex and that there are a lot of resources on the languages phonetics. GRADE DISTRIBUTION Homework (3) - 21% Written Midterm - 22% Midterm Transcription Exam - 5% Spectrogram Quiz (Week 10) - 7% Final Transcription Exam - 5% Final Production Exam - 10% Final Project Preliminary Report - 5% Final Project Wordlist - 5% Final Project - 20% (1% EC with SONA Study)
Fall 2022 - LECTURE + DISCUSSION Lecture was definitely a weak spot of the class. Professor Jun lectures using handouts instead of slides. She repeats the material on these handouts in extreme detail and gives lots of supplemental examples which is great. But, she speaks very quietly and her microphone isn't that great so if you are sitting in the back half of the class sometimes you just don't hear her. Discussion is once a week and you practice the material you learned in lecture that week. The workload for this class was definitely manageable until around Week 7/8 (also when the strikes hit). There is a point where you're simultaneously studying production, transcription, spectrograms, and writing your final paper at the same time. There were many moving parts and you really can't slack on any aspect. Professor Jun was very accommodating and ended up extending our paper's due date. Even though this class was very challenging at times, it really confirmed my interest in my major and I learned A LOT... HOMEWORK The homework points in this class is definitely used to pad for some of the more challenging assignments. There were 3 assignments in total. Usually consisting of a ~20 question BruinLearn quiz with three attempts and sometimes a written submission. EXAMS There was a midterm week 6 and one "quiz" week 10. The midterm covered all of the material learned up until that point. The average was 18.1/22. The final quiz only covered spectrographs, the average was 5.2/7. At both exams there was also a transcription test. Jun's exams are definitely very challenging and require an extensive understanding of IPA. PROJECT The final project is spaced out throughout the quarter. You choose a language you are unfamiliar with and find a speaker and do a detailed phonetic analysis. The language you choose is so important. Make sure the sound system isn't simple or too complex and that there are a lot of resources on the languages phonetics. GRADE DISTRIBUTION Homework (3) - 21% Written Midterm - 22% Midterm Transcription Exam - 5% Spectrogram Quiz (Week 10) - 7% Final Transcription Exam - 5% Final Production Exam - 10% Final Project Preliminary Report - 5% Final Project Wordlist - 5% Final Project - 20% (1% EC with SONA Study)
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