Professor
Sun-ah Jun
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2025 - If you have the opportunity to take this class, save yourself the trouble and just do 102 or take a different professor, Professor Jun is a very nice lady, but the lectures were lacking. She talks at a really low volume and it's hard to understand what is happening. The last few weeks of the class were also hard to juggle as you would be learning new topics, practicing for the production exam, and writing your research paper. I also feel as though we weren't adequately prepared for the transcription exams.
Winter 2025 - If you have the opportunity to take this class, save yourself the trouble and just do 102 or take a different professor, Professor Jun is a very nice lady, but the lectures were lacking. She talks at a really low volume and it's hard to understand what is happening. The last few weeks of the class were also hard to juggle as you would be learning new topics, practicing for the production exam, and writing your research paper. I also feel as though we weren't adequately prepared for the transcription exams.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - This is the most useful class I ever took at UCLA. If you want to go into technology with your linguistics degree, especially something in the engineering, data science, or acoustic realm, this class will teach you things about the science of phonetics that will almost certainly come in handy (they did for me in the workplace in several ways). If you truly love performing scientific experiments, and you love acoustics or the acoustics of phonetics, Sun-Ah is the best professor for you. It is a demanding course, but you can get by without the textbook because the packets Sun-Ah provides are very thorough. Just make sure to go to lecture always and pay attention! You'll know if you have grasped the material or not, and as long as you stay engaged you should be fine. The exams don't pull any surprises; it's all material covered in lecture and written in the packets. You will have to perform a couple of phonetic experiments, learn to synthesize speech, and learn how to segment waveforms and read spectrograms, but these should be fun for anyone interested in the subject. Fantastically interesting science too.
Winter 2019 - This is the most useful class I ever took at UCLA. If you want to go into technology with your linguistics degree, especially something in the engineering, data science, or acoustic realm, this class will teach you things about the science of phonetics that will almost certainly come in handy (they did for me in the workplace in several ways). If you truly love performing scientific experiments, and you love acoustics or the acoustics of phonetics, Sun-Ah is the best professor for you. It is a demanding course, but you can get by without the textbook because the packets Sun-Ah provides are very thorough. Just make sure to go to lecture always and pay attention! You'll know if you have grasped the material or not, and as long as you stay engaged you should be fine. The exams don't pull any surprises; it's all material covered in lecture and written in the packets. You will have to perform a couple of phonetic experiments, learn to synthesize speech, and learn how to segment waveforms and read spectrograms, but these should be fun for anyone interested in the subject. Fantastically interesting science too.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2024 - Let me preface by saying that this class is probably not what you think it is. This class goes DEEP into intonational theory. It was a small class when I took it -- I think there were only 5 or so undergrads. This is also a cross-listed class every even year (2024, 2026, etc) so half the class was also grad students. At least a few of us took this class because intonation SOUNDS cool, but this class takes a much different approach to the point that it can seem needlessly technical. The first six weeks go over the intonation of English to intense detail: all the different ways to say a sentence that you may not even realize or hear the differences between. Knowing how to transcribe is a must for the HW and exams. There's some phonology like 119A/120A: i.e., some tones change into other tones after blah blah, and there's phonological domains, but you don't write any rules; you just have to recognize/hear the principles. The remaining weeks survey the intonations of Japanese, Korean, and French. To be honest these lectures aren't all that important if you're just trying to get a good grade. Just understanding the similarities and differences between each one (including English) should be enough to get you by. The homeworks can be hard -- it's 4 assignments where you're given audiotracks on Praat of various English sentences and have to transcribe them according to the intonational system that we use (ToBI). Then there's one "easier" HW in the middle of the quarter where you draw a pitch track according to some intonational transcription. When a homework is due, she'll spend half the lecture reviewing it and so many people would sigh whenever we had made a mistake. Exams are split into half transcription (like the homework) and half free response questions (I think around 20 each for midterm and final). Sun-Ah plays the audio during the exam and you transcribe. There aren't any tricks as long as you know the material well. Sun-ah is pretty forgiving, and at least when I took her, she curves generously. During homework reviews, she would often say "I think it's this, but I can see why you wrote this, so you won't lose a point there" and it was so nice. She's also super experienced in intonation (she's written like 3 books on this stuff), so if you're genuinely curious then go ahead and take this class. This class is very special and it's one of my favorite classes I've taken here, but I just don't think it's for everyone and don't want people to get disappointed like many of my peers did. If you're just looking for an easy linguistics elective, there are definitely easier (and probably more interesting) ones to take.
Spring 2024 - Let me preface by saying that this class is probably not what you think it is. This class goes DEEP into intonational theory. It was a small class when I took it -- I think there were only 5 or so undergrads. This is also a cross-listed class every even year (2024, 2026, etc) so half the class was also grad students. At least a few of us took this class because intonation SOUNDS cool, but this class takes a much different approach to the point that it can seem needlessly technical. The first six weeks go over the intonation of English to intense detail: all the different ways to say a sentence that you may not even realize or hear the differences between. Knowing how to transcribe is a must for the HW and exams. There's some phonology like 119A/120A: i.e., some tones change into other tones after blah blah, and there's phonological domains, but you don't write any rules; you just have to recognize/hear the principles. The remaining weeks survey the intonations of Japanese, Korean, and French. To be honest these lectures aren't all that important if you're just trying to get a good grade. Just understanding the similarities and differences between each one (including English) should be enough to get you by. The homeworks can be hard -- it's 4 assignments where you're given audiotracks on Praat of various English sentences and have to transcribe them according to the intonational system that we use (ToBI). Then there's one "easier" HW in the middle of the quarter where you draw a pitch track according to some intonational transcription. When a homework is due, she'll spend half the lecture reviewing it and so many people would sigh whenever we had made a mistake. Exams are split into half transcription (like the homework) and half free response questions (I think around 20 each for midterm and final). Sun-Ah plays the audio during the exam and you transcribe. There aren't any tricks as long as you know the material well. Sun-ah is pretty forgiving, and at least when I took her, she curves generously. During homework reviews, she would often say "I think it's this, but I can see why you wrote this, so you won't lose a point there" and it was so nice. She's also super experienced in intonation (she's written like 3 books on this stuff), so if you're genuinely curious then go ahead and take this class. This class is very special and it's one of my favorite classes I've taken here, but I just don't think it's for everyone and don't want people to get disappointed like many of my peers did. If you're just looking for an easy linguistics elective, there are definitely easier (and probably more interesting) ones to take.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - I could always rely on Sun-Ah to explain anything easily and simply. This class will involve learning MAE_ToBI, which is used to transcribed intonational phonology for English. If you are interested by phonology or phonetics, there is a good chance this class is for you.
Spring 2020 - I could always rely on Sun-Ah to explain anything easily and simply. This class will involve learning MAE_ToBI, which is used to transcribed intonational phonology for English. If you are interested by phonology or phonetics, there is a good chance this class is for you.
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