The previous review is pretty spot on. I didn't find the course easy, but Phonology is NOT my subject. I went in completely intimidated and ended up with an A at the end of the course. I had to put in a lot of work (especially for the homework), but he is indeed lenient with the quiz grading.

Save yourself pain, and GO TO OFFICE HOURS! For the final project, anyway. Ask a million questions. Take notes. That saved my group's grade, no doubt.

I had Professor Daland for Ling 119A rather than 120A. Professor Daland was very enthusiastic about teaching Linguistics and seemed to love it. He would always say "Isn't this awesome?" or "Isn't this cool?". He can be funny at times but at other times I found him a bit awkward rather than humorous. The course itself was not that hard. The class consisted of:

1. short quizzes(20%): He says that there are 1-2 quizzes every week but really there was usually 1 a week or sometimes none during that week so at the end of the quarter there was about 10 quizzes total. Although the quizzes were supposed to be multiple choice, that was never the case. However, the quizzes were easy and 8/10 of the quizzes I got 10/10. You'd get partial credit for things you write down (if they sort of make sense at least). Towards the end when we were starting our project, the quizzes were on answering if you had a topic, group members, progress, etc. so some quizzes were free points.

2. homework(40%): We had 6 homeworks total so almost 1 a week and they were very time-consuming. On some homeworks I would spend about 3hours+. You'd actually have to try on the homework and do your best to answer them if not correctly then with at least some explanation. I got at least 90% on all the homework except 1 where I got a 80% because I put in a lot of time. Keep in mind it is a good idea to find someone in the class that you can discuss about the homework with because it is really helpful.

3. final group project(40%): you need to collect data, do a rough draft, final draft, and then present your project (2-3min presentation) as the final. There are due dates for each part to keep you on task. The difficult part to this is finding a topic on a language you do not know about since you don't know what their linguistic features are. He also requires us to research on something that has not been researched on or researched on very little. He is, however, very helpful and gives suggestions/advice on what you can research on if you give him a general idea of what you want to do. There is no page limit for the paper but it would generally be around 10-20 pages (with some data added as examples). Splitting the work among your group members (3-4 people) made it easier to do. There are also peer reviews that are required in which your group reviews 3 other groups, Daland reviews everyone's, and TA's also review all. Doing the project turned out to be not too difficult as long as your group members contributed and did their parts. When writing the rough draft, you should try and put in some effort. The reviews for groups ranged from A's - F's (F's for those who clearly put in no effort). My group did our paper the night before it was due but we really tried to write it in a organized and clear way, and we received reviews that ranged between an A to B.

Overall, the course was not hard if you at least did your work, put in effort, and went to class. I received an A at the end of the quarter.