overall, a super easy summer asynchronous class. the lectures were quite long but interesting. I def think if I took this irl it would've been a lot harder because the phonetic alphabet stuff can be tricky to learn without using external tools.

the final paper was also fun to write. you could pick any celebrity you wanted to and analyze their speech patterns/phonetic alphabet they use to say words. my TA was very nice and was a lenient grader.

I have no complaints about this class. easy A!

Easiest A of my life. The homeworks were lowkey a joke.

In one of the early lectures, I brought up "dump truck" as an example of polysemy vs homonymy, if I recall correctly.

I don't remember what homework assignments were like, nor do I remember the grading scheme, but I do recall that none of the workload felt superfluous or overwhelming.

Dr. Rett absolutely shines in lectures. Lots of active participation going on, and the notes she provides are excellent review material. She used the notes as a rubric for lectures and the blackboard to provide examples for concepts. It never felt intimidating to ask questions, both in lecture and in office hours. Strong recommend, and I enjoyed her course enough to take 165C with Prof. Bumford, which was excellent in and of itself.

The class was asynchronous. Overall super interesting. Discussion was optional. Great class to take over summer!

LING 20

Don't get me wrong, she's nice but damn--

SHE SUCKS. Boring, dry and monotone.
Even my TA thinks so... She makes a lot of mistakes.
Maybe she is too busy with her research. Heed this warning. I am a linguistics major.

Just don't do it. For ANY class.

LING 20:

I'm taking this class because I have to for a G.E. I was mildly interested at the beginning of the course, but Rett is such a terrible teacher, I can say I hate linguistics. She doesn't teach and she has alienated me from linguistics such that I am pass/no-passing this class and don't really give a shit about anything I learn. This is rare because I take my education seriously and have a high GPA. But when it comes to this class, I just can't care any less. I wouldn't say she's the worst professor on campus, but there's something about her that makes me - again - not give a shit about linguistics.

Professor Rett lacks the proper teaching skills. She tries so hard to be funny in class just to connect with the students but in truth she barely connected with any of us at all. All her lectures, powerpoint presentations and podcasts were ineffective. The quizzes, too, did not help the students in any way. All the homework questions were crucially hard and the worst part was it was up to us students to figure out the answers in detail as Professor Rett did not help us at all. The Final Exam may be open book and notes but it was still the hardest test because the questions asked were not at all taught to us. Even the review sheet did not help us in any way as they were all just random terms she chose from the book, and by random I meant, she did not teach us those terms in lecture at all.

It is truly sad that there are people who do not care for student learning. From the first day of lecture, she intimidated us with words such as Linguistics is not for everyone. Another instance is when a student asked Professor Rett about the time it will take to finish the exam, Professor Rett replied: "I don't know. It only took me 10 minutes to finish." From a student's perspective, these words not only dissuaded me from studying Linguistics but it also made me lose confidence in myself.

LING 20:

Wow, what a freaking awful class. I wasn't really interested in Linguistics to begin with, I just took this as a GE because I heard that it's not so bad and I figured I may learn a thing or two.

First of all, Prf. Rett is SO BORING. Honestly I would sit in Royce literally about to fall asleep from boredom. She is so monotonous and the subject material she covers in her powerpoints are pretty much identical to what's in the book. Most people stopped coming to lecture altogether.

The class has no midterm, just an open-book/note final exam, 7 homework assignments, and quizzes after each lecture. Most of the quizzes were alright, and the homework required a lot of re-reading the book because she never went over most of the concepts in class.

The final exam sucked. It was on concepts that hadn't been re-enforced in class, and you basically had to rely on your notes and knowledge.

Please for the love of god, don't take her. She made what should've been an easy GE into a nightmare.

Linguistics 125=120C (Semantics)
Professor Rett is very funny and inspiring. But semantics can be hard for pure-humanties majored students or non-native English speakers because it requires some very abstract ideas (quantitative training background might help a lot)

Readings are extremely important!! about 30 pages a week. one multiple-choice reading quiz on every class (drop 2).
As long as you do the readings, you will ace that 30%. But make sure you understand ALL the readings because they can be so dam hard.

40% Homework is the hardest part in this course. that's why if you don't understand the readings, you will not do well on the homework. so make sure to ask questions in class about the readings.

final is relatively easy compare to the homework.

semantics is very interesting. The class is harder than other linguistics classes because you're competing with other cs major students. But you'll learn A LOT! Overall, this is one of the best classes at UCLA ever.

I'm a little surprised by the bad reviews, she wasn't bad at all. The lectures were pretty slow and she always took the time to answer every student's questions (even annoying ones). I actually really enjoyed her as a professor, she tried to make the class interactive.

I've heard a lot of bad things about this course and if you're reading these reviews thinking it's not for you, I definitely encourage you to just try the class for yourself. I'm glad I went into the class not knowing anything because I came into the class not expecting it to be terrible and it turned out to be so interesting that I decided to double-major in Ling.

I will say that while the homework and quizzes were do-able, the final was ridic. But it was open book and open note.

My TA was pretty much useless, by the way.