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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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!

Grading:
2 analysis papers - 15% each
homework - 25%
midterm - 20%
final - 25%

Class:
Super fun and interesting class (if linguistics is interesting to you). The class was asynchronous for me, so it was 2-3 hours of pre-recorded lectures. My discussion section was online, so that meant I could go to any discussion section, which was really nice and flexible. The video lectures were from another lecturer, not this professor. Torrence (the lecturer) is super entertaining and easy to understand. I also loved how much this class attempts to change how people view other languages and dialects. It’s a super refreshing and enlightening perspective on language that I was grateful to experience. I would recommend this class to everyone, though if you know anything about this class, it’s that it’s super hard to get into. If you are an incoming freshman, they save spots in this class during orientation, so have a few devices ready if you want to get this one. If you’re not a incoming freshman, you have to have one of the earliest enrollment times.

Papers:
Both papers were honestly so fun to write. They are graded really easily. The rubric is essentially in the instructions; just make sure to read through them and make sure you hit everything it says so include in your paper. The papers are both informal and interesting!

Exams:
Exams are done through Respondus proctoring. It was fine except it doesn’t tell us if we get flagged for anything. The professor is really understanding though when it comes to flags and such. For my test it kicked me out and I had to continue the test from where I left it, and I emailed the professor and she didn’t mind. The test itself is fair. It’s all multiple choice, so even if you have some trouble with phonetics and IPA, process of elimination is a life saver (esp w those vowels cause remembering those can be difficult). The questions rarely (if not ever) rely on the textbook alone. They are lecture heavy—also be sure to read the required readings (not including textbook) if they are given. Both are 50 questions; midterm is 1.5 hours and final is 3 hours, but you’ll probably need 1 hour each.

Homework:
There are 6 homework quizzes. They are super easy and open book (sometimes they are on other sites but be wary that the test questions are very similar, so try to do these honestly to get a good understanding of how you will do on the exams). They are graded on accuracy.

Textbook:
The textbook can be found online. Even if you can’t find the same version (which you will be able to), the professor accepts other editions. They are also not as important to the course as lectures and provided readings and case studies.

This class is unique in that Professor Silvestri isn't really our instructor. All of the instructional material came from pre-recorded lectures (mostly from Harold Torrence) and from TAs.

As an asynchronous class, you have to put in the work to keep up with the lectures. The additional material (textbook, readings, documentaries) were largely unnecessary, as the lectures are mostly comprehensive. (that being said, definitely give the textbook a skim for terms not in the lecture that could pop up in an exam). The lectures themselves were really good -- Professor Torrence is a fun and engaging lecturer and the visuals are easily to follow. The final few lectures by Professor Schuh were also super interesting and fun. The recorded lectures are nice to speed up, pause, and rewind as necessary.

Overall, the course material is pretty easy to grasp. It's fascinating stuff and I wanted to keep learning. Learning IPA and phonology was probably the trickiest part, but it's just memorization. Syntax and morphology can also get you if you don't practice before the exam. The other theoretical stuff is easy to comprehend if you just take good notes. I particularly enjoyed the portions of the class that dealt with social/historical implications of linguistic concepts.

Your grade is largely dependent on the midterm and final, but those were (in my opinion) a lot easier than they were made out to be. Just take good notes and study the tricky stuff in advance, and you should be fine. The homework is open book and super easy, and the two papers are easy and pretty fun to write.

Overall, nice intro to linguistics! Hard to review Prof. Silvestri, as she was largely just the administrator for the course, but the material and work was fun and interesting throughout.

This class was pretty average. It was asynchronous, so it felt like more work than it was-- lectures ranged from 2-3 hours per week, so I'd recommend setting a strict schedule on when you'll watch them and keep yourself accountable since its easy to fall behind. The workload was a little unnecessary, as I skipped most of the screenings and textbook readings and did fine. Definitely would have been fine without buying the textbook. The case studies were interesting but only 1-2 questions about them were on the midterm and final. Basically, you could probably get away with just watching the lectures, taking good notes, and maybe skimming the case studies. There were 2 analysis papers, both were a very easy A and really fun to write. Weekly homework quizzes that were a little long but not terrible. The phonetics unit was annoying since it briefly mentioned transcription but all of a sudden you were tasked with translating words into IPA. In all, I'd probably take this class again as certain points were very interesting and it was a pretty easy A. Just make sure you stay on top of it.