Dr. Bahtina is extremely caring and thoughtful. She tried her best to make the class engaging - even during COVID - and I appreciate her a bunch! The class wasn't too challenging, but the research paper was definitely more intense than I was expecting. Definitely give your topic some thought, because I ended up hating my topic by the end of the quarter. Daria is super approachable and sweet, but the readings were definitely quite dense. Don't let that dissuade you too much though - I overall enjoyed the class.

Can't find the review page for her Ling M7, I'll just write it here:

I WOULD NEVER RECOMMEND THIS CLASS TO ANYONE, THIS CLASS HONESTLY GAVE ME SO MUCH PAIN AND ANXIETY. Most people taking this class are just trying to fulfill their GE req, but Prof Bahtina thinks everyone is linguistics genius or sth, so she made the material really challenging for us. If it wasn't for the curve, I probably would have got a B+, but just because the entire class was doing so poorly, I got round up to an A+ ...?

This class killed my interest for linguistics lol

I took this class when it was called Scientific Study of Language and Society, which was essentially an intro to sociolinguistics. Lectures were pre-recorded and came with downloadable slides, which made notes and studying for exams so much easier. The typical weekly workload consists of two lecture responses (some mcq and frq), a discussion board post, project prep for discussion sections, and sometimes Perusall annotations. The project prep work picks up toward the end of the quarter (starting around when you do the project proposal), so be prepared for that. It can seem like a lot since most things are due on Thursday (before discussion sections on in the afternoon), but looking back it seemed like a reasonable workload.

The most heavily weighted assignment in the class is the research project (worth 40%). Even though a group project in an asynchronous class sounds scary at first, both Dr. Bahtina and our TA Hannah took action in groups where some members were unresponsive or weren't pulling their weight. There are also opportunities midway and at the end of the quarter to report group members who were contributing less or nominate members who did extra work for extra credit. The actual project itself is broken up so that a little bit of work is due before each week's section, and those assignments also contribute to your project grade.

Don't stress too much about the midterm and final! As long as you watch the lecture videos, go over the slides a bit, and do the posted practice questions, you should be good to go.

Overall, would take this class again! Dr. Bahtina and Hannah were super nice and clearly cared a lot about us students.

I love Professor Bahtina! This was my second class with her and she's still one of my favorite professors. The subject is really interesting and the project allows for exploration of really anything you are interested in. What I will say is that attendance is taken in lectures (you get three allowed absences, not bad) and the majority of your grade is a group project. I got lucky and loved my group, but in general group projects are not everyone's favorite so fair warning. Despite attendance and group projects, which usually makes me drop a class right away, the professor is awesome and made it worth taking!