Carson is a nice and articulate guy. His lectures aren't the most engaging ones but he does try his best to get everyone involve. All the slides are posted and lectures are bruincasted, and they are helpful when you're reviewing, for he organizes and explains most concepts well. Sometimes you would even say he is overexplaining things.

Probably the reason why it is a course that not that many people get an A is because he gives pretty hard tests to get a big wiggle room for curve. I remember the average score of the midterm was C+, something quite rare for a humanity course. And for the final we just had, there were a few people literally leaving one hour after the start (the test is 3 hours), because the questions were really edgy. Another challenge would be the homework that takes up 45% of the grade - for morphology and syntax they are generally ok yet they are considerably difficult in the Phonology unit, which happens to be taught first in the course. So getting a head start is extremely important for the course.

My suggestion for succeeding in this course is to get a study partner and go to your TA!! I had Scott, who is an amazing lecturer and super passionate about the material. The discussion sessions don't count into the total grade but try not to miss any one of them for they are super helpful.

This class is very interesting. Schutze is a good professor but most of the learning comes from doing homework assignments (and reading) independently and asking questions in office hours and discussion sessions. If you go to every class and ask questions when you are confused, you can succeed in this class. A lot of my class understood the material and a lot of my class DID NOT. In order to make sure you understand and learn the material, you have to communicate with your TA and Schutze. I started to slack and therefore earned my letter grade of C when all I needed to do was go to office hours every week and I could have done just fine. You must also read the book! The book will save your life and teach you everything you need to know.

I started to struggle after the midterm...the class is long and I would nod off because Schutze does not have a loud or attention grabbing voice. If you can stay focused easily, you'll be fine.

Seeing as how nobody has reviewed this professor in 3 years, I felt obligated to leave a message. I don't just rant on message boards either, I submitted the same critiques to him via evaluations and this is the first time I have felt so inspired to let others now about my experience.

Professor Schutze is disorganized, incoherent and professionally incapable of conveying his point. For an individual who has been teaching for "17 years," these shortcomings are even more egregious and significantly more aggravating for a student in his course. His lectures are lethargic and incomprehensible for most of the time. If you take this course, you will be teaching yourself the material via homework and section.

Before I go any further, I would like to point out that he is a nice man and he does genuinely care about his students's learning, but with regard to his competency as a professor I highly recommend you take another course. Especially if you are only taking this as GE Requirement because I can personally guarantee that this material will not interest you, especially when presented in this manner. To make things worse, Professor Schutze take relatively simple concepts - concepts that he knows he is presenting to a class comprised overwhelmingly of students who are not Linguistics majors - and magnifies there difficulty ten-fold.

This is coming from a student who earned a high passing grade in his class. Do not take it. You will work and it will frustrate you to no end. Cheers.

Well, he's not the most INTERESTING lecturer. It was really hard not to fall asleep. If I didn't fall asleep, I thought his lectures were very logically organized, and he takes an almost scientific approach to the topics.

I'm not sure why most people rate him as ineffective though (other than the really dull lectures). If you are able to pay attention, you learn a lot, pretty much everything you need to do the homework and the tests. I went to the lectures, and never read a page of the textbook.

I thought the homework was reasonably difficult, as was the midterm. We'll see about the final. Ling 20 is supposed to introduce you to the Linguistics major, so it needs to at least be challenging. If you're looking an easy Ling class, take Ling 1.

Lectures lack cohesiveness & consistency, therefore unreliable. E.g., told me in front of the class that I was wrong and that the morphological structure of 'unhappiness' can ONLY be unhappi-ness and not un-happiness, while the text acknowledges there ARE 2 possible structures. Further, don't expect him to make much of any extra effort to comprehend or answer your question. If you express confusion after he offers an answer, he just stares at you for a second, and then moves on. Also, avoid taking discussion with the TA Korotkova. Both appear to have an equally difficult time effectively imparting knowledge or engaging with students.

If given the opportunity, choose any other professor for this class. This was my first quarter at UCLA and it was made absolutely miserable by Prof Schutze. His lectures and excruciating, and attending them only makes the material difficult to learn and unenjoyable. Although he drops your lowest of 8 HW grades, his assignment were long and do not prepare you for exams very well. Most of his "reviews" are just confusing corrections to the book, in which he tells you to negate entire instructions in favor of his own. Although he is willing to take questions and discuss the course material outside of class, most of the time he will just correct the way to asked a question, instead of just answering it.
This course acts as a GE as well as a pre-requisite for upper division Ling course. Although I feel that it is possible to master the material if dedicated to the subject, I do not think Prof Schutze does of good job of preparing his students for upper division Ling course in a realistic and encouraging manor.

This was one of the hardest classes I have taken at UCLA. He is a horrible lecturer. I came into the classes with a high level of interest in the class and left hating every bit of it. The readings make more sense than the lectures. The homework assignments were very long and took a large amount of time. Avoid taking Ling 20 with him if you can!

The material for this class was not horrible, however, Schutze is a terrible professor, and I advise anyone to not take him. I got an A in the class, and still believe that he is a terrible lecturer. The homeworks do take a really long time, but for the most part, are understandable. His biggest problem is that he is a terrible lecturer; the exams are not terrible, and the reading isn't so bad, but his lecturers are close to impossible to sit through. This was the first class I ever fell asleep in at UCLA, and I dreaded going to them. He makes the material impossible to understand, and I had to go to so much outside help to understand the material. I thought that the actual subject was not that bad, and was actually interested in it, but the professor is definitely not the guy to go to for learning about it.