I took this class as a GE and although I never expected to take a linguistics class and enjoy it, I can say that I did enjoy this class. This class introduces you to linguistics from different perspectives, and through its inclusion of biology and evolutionary bases, I found myself interested in the class much more than I expected. The class has weekly quizzes (which I usually got at least one wrong) and a midterm and take-home final. I did really well on the midterm and final, and did any extra credit opportunities offered which allowed me to get an A+. I'm glad that I took the class, as it introduced me to linguistics and was enjoyable overall.

Professor Clayton was a very well-spoken professor. He cared about student's learning and valued understanding of the subject above all else. He never failed to make students feel welcome and comfortable. I would definitely take another course he taught simply because he is an amazing professor who is great at communication and funny. I hope this evaluation shows his irreplaceable value as a professor at UCLA.

I'm a cognitive science major who decided to take this class because I couldn't get the intro linguistics course I wanted, but I knew that I still wanted to take a class about linguistics, so I settled for M4. I am so glad that I decided to take this course. Dr. Clayton is a great lecturer, and incredibly accommodating of the needs of his students. He uploads his slides after every class, which has been incredibly helpful considering that I have had to miss a handful of lectures this quarter. I have learned so much about historical linguistics, evolutionary linguistics, evolutionary biology, psycholinguistics: etc. The material taught in the course is very interdisciplinary, and all of it is fascinating! There are two readings due every week that tend to be a bit long, but you can skim over them for the most part since Dr. Clayton does a great job of talking about the subjects that they touch on during lecture. I would recommend doing most of the readings, though, since they are usually quite interesting (they can be redundant at times, but I digress). Midterm was take-home, final is also going to be take-home. You also have to do a presentation at the end of the quarter about a topic in linguistics that you find interesting, but it is fairly low-stakes, from my understanding. TL;DR: This is a low-stress, fun GE, and you will learn a lot about many different linguistic subtopics. Take this class!