Super interesting and easy class. Go to TA Nico's section. he is brilliant and so good at explaining things. NICO IS THE BEST TA.

Dr. Silvestri runs the class, but Harold Torrance teaches the online lectures. The lectures were quite interesting, and I had no problem listening on 2x speed and understanding everything. The modules came with lots of interesting supplementary documentaries and videos to boost understanding and engage me when I was interested in a particular topic. This is a great, simple intro to linguistics and I would definitely recommend taking before LING 20 if you don't get it in fall quarter, as it will give you a major head start and isn't a huge pain in terms of workload.

get this class if you can :) weekly homework based on the lectures which took me 2 hours total. online midterms and finals.

I took this class as a GE, and was super glad I did! Aside from being incredibly easy, the content of the class was also pretty interesting to me.

The structure of the class is based on 10 modules that correspond to the 10 weeks of class. Each week, you're assigned around 30 pages of textbook reading, 2-3 ~60 minute recorded lectures, and a ~15 question open-note, open-internet quiz, all of which you complete at your own pace. The lectures were given by Professor Harold Torrence, and were often longer than they need to be (you can watch them on 2x speed if you prefer) but generally pretty interesting. The content was so short that most weeks I started the content on Monday and finished the quiz by Tuesday.

Aside from the weekly quizzes, your grade is also based on two analysis papers, a midterm and a final. Both analysis papers involve analyzing the speech of a public figure (celebrity, YouTuber, politician, etc.) according to certain linguistic features they display, such as their grammar, pronunciation, accent, etc. The rubrics for these papers are INCREDIBLY SPECIFIC, which is super helpful, since as long as you mention each point Silvestri wants, you're basically guaranteed an A! In my opinion, the hardest part of both essays was finding the proper person to analyze. After that, the essays wrote themselves.

The midterm and final were both fairly easy. I found them to be about the same difficulty as the weekly quizzes, although these ones are both administered through Respondus lockdown browser, so keep that in mind.

The hardest part of this course was easily the unit on phonetics, which requires you to memorize some basic English IPA symbols and the specific classifications they fall under. The syntax and morphology units were also a little denser than most, but generally easier than phonetics. Aside from those units, everything else was super light, mostly self-explanatory, and actually really fascinating to me. Would recommend.

I was told that this class would be an incredibly easy GE and that I wouldn't have to put in any work to get an A. That is not true at all. The content of this class is very difficult and takes a significant amount of time to learn, especially phonetics. While the homework and the worksheets were easy, the midterms and finals were not, so I would only reccomend taking this class if you're really into linguistics.

This class was supposed to be an easy GE class, but it was not for me because of the TA!!! Such a harsh, mean, and unsupportive TA made my class experience much more difficult and worse overall. Arjun was not a great TA, and his section was boring. However, the lecture videos were highly informative, and the contents were interesting. As an asynchronous class, all your experience will depend on the TA, so make sure you choose a good one. I would recommend this class if you are interested in linguistics, but if you’re not, don’t waste the time here. Most importantly, I hope you have a better TA than I did.

Fairly easy class. The lectures were online and discussion was not mandatory. There were 2 papers, a midterm and final exam. The papers were not bad, the TAs give lots of support. The exams were very fair and not bad. The content gets more advanced week 6 and beyond and you do have to put effort into learning the material but not hard to do well. It's online which I really liked and overall enjoyed taking ling 1.

I took it async and it is pretty easy. I only got an A- because I flopped on some of the weekly quizzes. (there are weekly quizzes, a midterm essay, final essay, and a lockdown browser midterm and lockdown browser final). The topic is interesting IMO.

Easiness – 4 It was fine, it wasn’t too bad, the only reason I didn’t give a 5 for the class is because of the stupid analysis papers. I got such low grades on them; this was partially because of the TA strike so I couldn’t talk to my TA about what they expected from the papers. They were such a pain to do and the absolute worst part of the class. Other than that the class was mostly fine.

Clarity – 5 You don’t ever get instruction from the professor and the professor making the lectures is someone else who is pretty clear, but all the directions should be there in the module for you to succeed.

Helpfulness – 3 I have never interacted with this professor hence why 3, neutral, so I couldn’t tell you how helpful she is, but based on the emails and reminders she sends about everything I think she is pretty helpful

Overall – 2 – The online lectures were kind of annoying despite it being the same as a regular lecture just having the freedom to do it whenever you want, I guess for me I didn’t really like it. The content was interesting, but It really was not presented in the most interesting way. Also the essays were the worst thing. Overall I wouldn’t say this class is “free” and didn't entirely enjoy the class.

Very manageable class. This GE has a slightly heavier workload compared to GEs ive taken in the past, but has definitely been one of the most interesting ones ive taken so far--highly recommend it. The asynchronous option is so nice as I'm able to fit it into my schedule however I like. The class itself is pretty easy as long as you watch the recorded lectures, work on homeworks with a friend, and put sufficient effort into the essays. There are 2-3 interesting lecture videos per week and can range from 1 to 3 hours of total watch time (I watched them all at 2x speed and took notes; no need to do the textbook readings). The tests are taken online using Respondus and they are much easier than the homeworks. Essays are also pretty easy as long as you cite sources and follow directions carefully. I didn't attend any discussion sections and I did fine. As long as you keep up with the course each week and spend adequate time watching/studying, you'll do fine. Highly recommend taking this class.