Prof. Hayes is a very effective and inspiring lecturer. He keeps his website updated and organized(even his personal lecture note in case we need clarification). His assignments are usually clear and full of notes to eliminate any ambiguity.

As a professor he is enthusiastic and charismatic. He also is a highly intelligent scholar who makes sure his every word is loaded with sense and logic. Talking to Prof. Hayes is undoubtedly one of the best professor interaction you can get at ucla - he listens intensively and answers in a well-organized manner, and most of the time with some extra mind-stimulating questions for students to further ponder on.

As far as the class goes - it is a lot of information in a short period of time. You'll find yourself with lots of fun and applicable new ideas at the end of the quarter. That is to say, if you want an easy A, take Ling1 instead; if you want a meaning GE experience and think you might enjoy linguistics, definitely take this class.

I would say that this class is a great class for laying a foundation for your future linguistics learning. I admit that Hayes' class is extremely demanding, and sometimes it does take a lot of time to finish the homework and stuff, but I think he is really good at lecturing. I seriously don't understand why people would say that his class is not organized, I strongly argue that it is not true. It is hard, yes, but if you do the reading and do the exercises in the reading, the lecture really is easy peasy(btw I love the textbook he wrote).
The lectures are really great, but I would say that Hayes is not really helpful if you ask him questions in person. I feel like sometimes he doesn't really understand what the students want to ask. I asked him if he could talk about the homework a little bit in class because it was extremely hard, but he somehow thought that I wanted him to postpone the deadline and he told me to just read the textbook. He did acknowledge that he misunderstood me later, but still, it was kind of hurtful. Nevertheless, I would still recommend his class because you can really learn a lot from his lectures.

I would not recommend taking this class unless you are absolutely required to. It is very demanding in terms of content and workload, especially for a lower division class. Homework can be difficult at times and requires much time/effort to understand and complete. I suggest going to office hours every week or joining a weekly study group to get through it. The midterm and final were very long and students should have been given more time to take the exams considering the type of questions he was asking. There were several questions on the midterm and final that covered things we had not learned in class. 9% of the class grade comes from daily quizzes given at the beginning of class, if you take it you get credit regardless of your answer. If you miss class you can make up the quiz in office hours. There is also a term paper worth 5% of the grade in which you must interview someone who speaks another language and analyze that language for a certain grammar phenomenon. Hint: avoid Mandarin and Japanese for this assignment. He offers 1% extra credit for participating in an experiment through the psych department. The end of the quarter felt very rushed, which was unfortunate because a good portion of the final had to do with the content that he taught at the end. Hayes wrote the textbook himself and provide a PDF to the class free of charge. One frustrating thing about this class is that the examples he used in class were almost always the same ones from the assigned reading, but he usually is more thorough in class so it is still worth attending. Overall if you go to class, take very, very detailed notes, and study for the midterm and final you should be able to pass comfortably. This is coming from someone who had no prior linguistics exposure.

I changed my major because of this class and this professor. The material of this course are naturally difficult to learn. However, professor Hayes never introduced us to the subject of linguistics even though this is an introductory course, so we basically went straight into the course material not really knowing what we were doing. Not to mention, he began teaching the course with the toughest material: syntax. His homework assignments are very tough. They mainly consist of data sets of words and/or sentences in various foreign languages and fake, made-up languages and asks you to apply course concepts to analyze them. The two exams are basically the homework assignments but 50 times harder.
Lack of organization: This professor along with his TA’s were SO disorganized. They lost my friend’s MIDTERM and a homework assignment of mine. Homework is a large part of your grade in this course, so my overall grade tanked. He gave me the option of redoing and resubmitting that homework assignment for credit, BUT LOST THAT ONE TOO and never responded to my emails, even when I tried to be flexible and send him a follow-up email in case he just missed the previously sent one. I went into this class so enthusiastic and hopeful because of the previously posted reviews on here, but was unfortunately very disappointed.
Take this class with Schutze if you can. He’s a least a little better. Also, try to avoid taking this class if it is offered as an 8am. You must be awake and ready to learn during lectures. He also gives a 1 point quiz at the beginning of every lecture for participation.
Good luck taking this class. I hope you love the subject. I wasn’t obsessed with it and this professor and his class made me not like it very much.

his class really wasn't that easy. you actually had to spend time doing the homeworks and studying for the exam. his midterm was really straightforward and about 15 people got over 100% but the final was almost impossible for the 3 hours. if you're looking for an easy A, this really isn't the class.

The class was difficult, mostly due to the subject matter and the amount covered. Homework is pretty tough as well and Finals was a killer. But overall, I learned a lot from this class. I find it useful to attend all his lectures since his explanations are pretty clear. Some of his examples get pretty weird but most times it's quite entertaining. Reading his notes made a lot of sense afterwards if you've listened to his lecture.
Grading is fair. He curves the class, so most people end up with a B+ average. Overall a good basic linguistics class especially if you're a Ling major, but if you're just looking for an easy pre-req class, probably not for you.

Although consensus is generally that Hayes is an organized and efficient professor, it is often unclear exactly what he wants in assignments. He can be remarkably insensitive to his students' feelings.

This is a very clear and well-organized professor. His assignments are difficult, but valuable. He is also extremely conscientious in terms of his feedback on assignments. He can be difficult to interact with outside of the classroom, however.

Professor Hayes knows what he's talking about and conveys it in a charismatic, caring way. It's nice that he gets to teach undergrad seminars, because it's a great way to get to know this awesome professor. I would recommend him completely because his grading is fair and he wants everyone to succeed.

He's a great professor! I look forward to going to class, because his lectures are interesting, interactive, and fun. I would definitely take as many of his classes as I can, and recommend him to anyone else.