Sam is the best professor I have ever had from the linguistics department. He is a great lecturer and provides very clear notes and questions for each lecture. He reads from the lecture notes and then. does exercises with the class to help you understand the concept he is teaching. Participation doesn't matter and I have missed a few lectures and was able to catch up with the notes, BUT I highly recommend going to lectures because they are super engaging and Sam teaches phonology very well. The homeworks were pretty hard honestly, but the class is skills-based so if you do well on the quizzes and got the necessary skills, you can afford to do not so great on the homeworks.

The class is skills-based, which means your grade cannot drop lower than 50 percent and you can get skills by demonstrating proficiency and advanced proficiency on various phonological skills. You can get advanced proficiency from harder phonological problems on quizzes, homeworks, and tests. For the tests, there is one midterm and one final, both were in-person and you get a full page cheatsheet. There is about one homework a week and one quiz every monday. For this class, the quizzes were in-person, 15 minutes and you had to answer small phonological problems matching various skills, you also got a small notecard cheatsheet. If you miss a quiz or homework, don't worry because Sam provided ample opportunities to get all of the skills you need to do well in the class.

Trust me, I am not the best student regarding participation and keeping up with classes, but I have felt very comfortable with the pace and learning experience Sam provided in Ling 119A. If you can ever take Sam, do it! He is the absolute GOAT of linguistics.