Took Ling 1 for a GE credit in spring 2020 so it was online. Professor Torrence's lectures are all pre recorded. He's very clear and easy to understand, and he's pretty engaging for a recorded lecture. It's overall a pretty easy class. The exams kind of suck since they use Respondus lockdown browser and are pretty memorization heavy (like memorizing phonemes and rules etc). There were 2 analysis papers and they were super short and straightforward, and the homeworks were a breeze. Definitely recommend this class if you're looking for something interesting and easy!

Easiest GE I've taken so far. Lectures were pretty informative (though I must confess I barely listened to them after the first midterm and instead crammed with other students in the class for the final) and homework was very easily and light. The analysis papers seem like a lot, but honestly both can be written up in less than two hours. Prof. Torrence is a great lecturer and knows his stuff. You'll definitely learn an interesting thing or two from this course.

Linguistics is an interesting yet challenging discipline. For newcomers, it will probably be unlike anything you've seen before. You learn about the commonalities between the world's languages, how we acquire grammar as a child, the sound patterns of languages, how sentence structure is conceived, how to perceive meaning, and more. This class will make you think. Ling 1 fulfills the life science GE or the philosophical/linguistic GE.

I am currently the book: Pinker's "The Language Instinct" as an iBooks version for $4. I would recommend using this electronic version as you can easily find keywords by using command F, which is very helpful when doing the homework.

Also, I am selling all of the answers to the homeworks (I got 100% on all of them), $2 per homework. Feel free to text me at **********. Good luck with this class!

whoever created these videos at TFT is bad at editing..... why do you only show the notes for like 5 seconds and zoom in on the professor for like 20 seconds.....

class overall isnt bad though. just lots of material and a lot to keep up with. material is interesting.

This class is pretty much an easy A. Lectures are interesting and we had the option to join whichever discussion section we liked. There were two essays which were not hard to complete and there is a highly recommended book (but not mandatory) that you could read.
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I AM SELLING A PDF VERSION OF THIS BOOK ("An Introduction to Language 11 edition" by Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams). If interested, send me quick email:
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He is so strict about grading distribution and I was 92.90% that he gave me A-. I liked the material but I hated the professor.

This class is awesome! Super interesting and the paper wasn't graded to hard.

I think this class was good. I expected to have my socks blown off, but hard to do that asynchronously. At the end of the day, I learned some interesting language facts and got to know the Ling field in a way I had no knowledge of previously. I just wish they weren't so repetitive in lectures, because there was a lot of fluff and repetition that made it difficult to sit through all the material. Elisa Migliaretti was a great TA, make sure you can attend her section. I would be still struggling with IPA had it not been for her.

Torrence was frustrating. He was over an hour and a half late to our 8 AM final (with our tests) and we couldn't have extra time because another class needed the room for their final. I think he ended up not using the final for our grade, and it was extremely annoying. He was very unorganized and the class was extremely boring. I like Linguistics, but I hated this class. It was easier than any class I've taken (even in high school), but I would not take a class with him again. The class is easy. Take it with a different professor.

This is an interesting course and Professor Torrence does a great job explaining the course content. Just be sure to stay on top of the HW, analysis paper deadlines, and attend discussion section especially for the modules with more written exercises.