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.

Take this class with Silvestri and bonus points if your TA is Hannah! They are both such wonderful Linguistics professors and I'm glad to have taken Morphology with these instructors :D. The class have 2 quizzes through canvas (not timed) and you have a whole week to do so. The main assignment in this class is a giant research project that's separated into 3 sections: Prospectus, mid development, and the final paper. Don't worry, these can seem like a lot of work and it is. But just put a decent amount of time and effort onto the paper and you'll do great.
Also don't be shy to ask the professor or the TA for help. They will be gladly to help you and Silvestri is just a wonderful professor! Many linguistics student will say so!

Anyways have fun in this class and don't give up!

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.

Overall - this is an easier class to achieve an A. The papers were time consuming however there isn't much work other than that. Exams were conceptual and followed from lectures - I struggled a bit with the IPA/phonetics unit with translating audio to IPA and vice versa, but practicing problems in discussion and lecture helped a lot for this.

This class was extremely easy and was completely asynchronous. The analysis papers were a little annoying, but I think my TA just graded harsher than everyone else. Overall, this class is a really easy GE.

the class wasn't too bad, the final had difficult questions but u could prolly get away w forgetting abt this class all quarter and studying two weeks before the final/midterm. the homeworks r alr and the extra credit opportunities r nice. it kinda j depends on ur ta and how they grade ur essays cuz some r chill but ik some ppl got strict tas and their grades tanked cuz of their essay grades.

the class wasn't too bad, the final had difficult questions but u could prolly get away w forgetting abt this class all quarter and studying two weeks before the final/midterm. the homeworks r alr and the extra credit opportunities r nice. it kinda j depends on ur ta and how they grade ur essays cuz some r chill but ik some ppl got strict tas and their grades tanked cuz of their essay grades.

Everyone wants to take Ling 1 because it's a pre-req for a lot of majors and counts as a science GE, so humanities majors are all over it. In terms of Silvestri herself, I couldn't tell you if she's good or not because I never interacted with her. She uses pre-recorded lectures of Professor Torrence, and her TAs lead the discussion and grade the papers. The midterm and final are online with a lockdown browser and webcam. I understand that this is a huge lecture course (500), but I wish there was a bit more flexibility, especially considering Silvestri is not super engaged with the content. For example, I had a near 100% in the class, but I got a really bad grade on the first analysis paper. Totally understand that this is entirely my fault, but when I went to the TA and asked if I could even get 5 points back, she said Silvestri would never allow it, and she discouraged me from even asking. There are lots of extra credit opportunities, and I'm not trying to avoid taking accountability, but I wish that if there was no involvement from the professor, she would be more accommodating to students who are trying to go above and beyond. I fear this is probably a departmental concern rather than a personal one. Regardless, this is one of the better professors to take this class, and I'm glad I took it.

PROS
-Straightforward
-Online

CONS
-Lots of busywork
-Not that interesting