Figured 120A would be a nightmare for me because I crawled through 102 with the most generous D grade of my life, but for someone who struggles massively with auditory processing type stuff, this course has been extremely enjoyable to take.

The grading scheme is such that there are goals for various concepts in the course; once you master them, your grade can't drop for that concept. As long as you master the various concepts and grab a couple advanced proficiencies, an A is extremely doable in this course, and unless a train wreck in my life occurs, I'm expecting an A- or an A. There is a final project, and it involves eliciting data from consultants regarding a phonological phenomenon in some language, both of your choice. It's a baby step into more rigorous academic writing but still appropriate in scale to the course where it doesn't feel intimidatingly/overwhelmingly formal.

Kie provides handouts each lecture, and while it does somewhat suck to miss lecture since you miss out on filling some blanks in the notes, the course is still easily manageable, and the lecture handouts are excellent review materials regardless. Strongly recommend taking this course with Kie, but in my experience, Dr. Bell is also an excellent professor for 119A (if for example, you took 102 or you need to petition to take 119A due tocourse availability) who was nothing but patient with me and my circumstances when I took 102 and dropped 119A a few years ago. Dr. Bell has the same grading scheme, so I suspect you won't go wrong regardless of which professor you choose. Regardless, Kie definitely made me appreciate phonology way more than I ever would have expected.

Printed handouts provided every lecture, and notes are allowed for quizzes and final. Assessments can't lower your grade; solve a type of problem once and you don't need to worry about that metric for the rest of the quarter. I didn't even show up to the final and still got an A+.