I absolutely loved this class, and it gave me a great interest for linguistics! As most people have mentioned, Silvestri does not directly teach this class. Instead, there are pre-recorded lecture videos by Harrold Torrence. You definitely don't want to fall behind or wait until the last minute to watch the lectures because they are usually pretty long and packed with a ton of information. You need to know pretty much all of that information to do well on the midterm and final. The exams were not open notes, and we did have to have our cameras on while taking them, so make sure you really know your stuff. Learning IPA was probably the most difficult part, but by taking just a few hours to study (I used Quizlet), I was able to get a really good grasp on it. The content was super interesting which made the course extremely worth it to me. Basically, I think you get out of this class what you put into it. If you keep up with the lectures, attend discussion sections, go to your TA with questions (especially for your analysis papers), and make a solid effort, you will do well!

Even though I didn't score the best in this class, I feel like the class is genuinely very well organized and there's an appropriate workload for it. Since it was online, we only had either 2 or 3 one hour long lectures that were very well prepared per week and these were all quite interesting! There are 5 quizzes that we also take online that are quite easy as long as you do the work for those 2 weeks, if you have trouble there are also quizlets that have the answers for all of them. The 2 three page essays were rather leniently graded and very easy to accomplish, took me a couple hours and I was pretty much set.

I took this class in my first quarter and the entire course was asynchronous except for the discussion sections which were online. In regards to the lectures, all of them were pre-recorded and were anywhere from 2-3.5 hours to get through each week. It usually took me a longer time as I took notes and continued to pause the video so if you're like me, it may take 3-5 hours depending on the subject for the week. On top of that, we have readings to get through from the textbook which go from about 15-25 pages a week. While the workload sometimes may feel like a lot, much of what we read in the textbook go over the lectures or simply add a bit more information. As far as this quarter, you can attend any of the discussion sessions even if that wasn't the one you chose. Discussion sections were mostly slide based and went over what we should have learned for the week. They were helpful in just providing examples on what we learned. As far as assignments we had, there were about 6 homework quizzes we needed to do (based on number correct, not completion) but if you did the work for the week, you should be fine. They're simple and were a good portion of our grade. There were two essays we had to do, about 1200-1400 words each, which had to do with comparing two languages and different features (I believe they were 15% each). They were pretty enjoyable actually, definitely not hard and so long as you follow the guidelines you will get full credit. Now to the midterm and final: Both combined were about 45-50% of our grade. Each test had 50 multiple choice questions each and for the midterm we had 1.5 hours to complete it and for the final we had 3 hours. You absolutely do not need all the time in my opinion, especially with the final, but it's good to have extra wiggle room. The content wasn't too hard at all, so long as you kept up and understand the material. I found the subject quite fascinating and actually learned a lot of valuable information. There were some trickier subjects such as phonetics but it's definitely manageable and once you get it, you'll be okay. I didn't have much interaction with Professor Giuseppina, but from email interactions she was very helpful and definitely showed care for the students! If you need a sign to take this class, THIS IS IT! It's an interesting subject to learn about, the work and tests are fairly simple, and it's asynchronous!

I really enjoyed this class! Despite all the lectures being pre-recorded, the material was presented in an engaging way that made the weekly homework super easy to comprehend and complete. There are 2 analysis papers that you are required to complete for this class - both of which are graded super easily and are not difficult to complete. I would say the most difficult parts of this class were the midterm and final, both of which consisted of 50 questions. Double and triple check your answers for these tests, since the answers are not as obvious as they may seem! Overall, I would recommend this class for anybody looking for a simple science GE.

Ling 1 with Silvestri is alright. The course was asynchronous. Silverstri put up the weekly videos, readings, and assignments ahead of time. The lecture videos were not given by the professor herself but by two other professors. They are pretty informative, but incredibly long for no reason. There were weekly assignments in a quiz format and sometimes we had some extra readings or videos to watch. All pretty easy if you spend time with the materials. Discussions are mandatory but for my section, it was the TA just reading slides on the same info as the lectures and readings, so very repetitive. There are two papers for the course which are pretty easy and just ask you to analyze some aspects of the language you speak in comparison to another language. Midterm and final were multiple choice about the content of the course, also pretty easy if you study.

This course was okay for a GE but it isn't anything special. Some of the information is common knowledge and everything else is memorization. Some of the themes of the course were also too ideological for my taste. You don't get any interaction with the professor unless you email her so your grade completely relies on how much effort you put in on the assigned work.

Would recommend as an easy science GE but overall, pretty time-consuming and repetitive.

I felt like I was slightly misled by the reviews or underestimated how much niche content was going to be on the tests because there was a ton of specific information necessary in order to score A's on these tests. There are many lectures, and discussion sections that will help out. IPA might be the most difficult thing to learn, but should not take more than a day to memorize. I felt as if the content of the tests were split between broad topics that you had to apply that were similar to the homework and random facts from slides throughout the quarter. I believe it is possible that I would have done better had a took a deeper and more focused look into the lectures. Overall, not super fun class but definitely manageable and certainly not a bad GE to take.

This is an easy class if you know another language in addition to English. We have near weekly multiple choice homework assignments, two 1200-word writing assignments comparing two languages (hence you need knowledge of a non-English language. The writing assignments have very clear instructions so it's very easy to meet the word count), and a midterm and final, both multiple choice.
If you take good notes on the lectures and understand all the homework, you will ace this class. Reading the textbook is not needed.

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.

This was a really interesting and somewhat easy class though the professor doesn't actually give the lectures. She posts recorded ones given by other professors (totaling to a few hours per week) and also shares related materials and case studies. There's homework almost every week, two essays with a required word count, a midterm, and a final. For the essays, you might need to put spaces between characters to increase your word count because entire sentences in some languages may only count as one word. They're graded pretty easily, and she provides a sample essay and a rubric. The homework and final had a few mistakes where some answers were repeated, and I don't know how she handled that. She didn't allow late homework submissions, but the homework is available for a week. It was on CCLE, so you could go back after the deadline and see what you got wrong. The midterm and final were proctored on Respondus, and you could use scratch paper. Some important tables were given to you, and most of the questions focused on heavily covered topics. But some asked about very specific, barely covered topics, or the answer was verbatim to something very specific in a lecture. You don't need to read the textbook or go to discussion, but those could clarify some things.

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.