Professor
William Torrence
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2025 - If you're looking for an easy GE this is it! There were 2 lecture videos about an hour long each, per week that were actually pretty interesting in my opinion. Professor Torrence was a very engaging lecturer and he gave many practice problems/examples that made the topics very easy to understand as someone with no background in linguistics. The weekly homework assignment (multiple choice quiz) was directly based off of the material in the lectures and would take me like 20-45 minutes. There were also case studies and textbook readings assigned each week but I would just skim them/not do them since they rarely/never appeared in the homework/exams. There are 2 papers that were very easy, I was able to finish them in a few hours. The midterm/finals are also very straightforward and based on the information in lecture. I would spend a lot of time taking notes during the lecture so that by the time the exams came, I didn't really need to study much. I also feel like some of the questions you could figure out using common sense. There are certain sections that require a lot of memorization and I would highly recommend doing the optional practice worksheets provided. For the discussions, we were able to go to whichever ones fit our schedule best, you don't have to go to the one you are enrolled in which was very convenient. Each TA had slides that were actually really helpful in going over the big ideas of that week's lectures.
Fall 2025 - If you're looking for an easy GE this is it! There were 2 lecture videos about an hour long each, per week that were actually pretty interesting in my opinion. Professor Torrence was a very engaging lecturer and he gave many practice problems/examples that made the topics very easy to understand as someone with no background in linguistics. The weekly homework assignment (multiple choice quiz) was directly based off of the material in the lectures and would take me like 20-45 minutes. There were also case studies and textbook readings assigned each week but I would just skim them/not do them since they rarely/never appeared in the homework/exams. There are 2 papers that were very easy, I was able to finish them in a few hours. The midterm/finals are also very straightforward and based on the information in lecture. I would spend a lot of time taking notes during the lecture so that by the time the exams came, I didn't really need to study much. I also feel like some of the questions you could figure out using common sense. There are certain sections that require a lot of memorization and I would highly recommend doing the optional practice worksheets provided. For the discussions, we were able to go to whichever ones fit our schedule best, you don't have to go to the one you are enrolled in which was very convenient. Each TA had slides that were actually really helpful in going over the big ideas of that week's lectures.
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