This class is unique in that Professor Silvestri isn't really our instructor. All of the instructional material came from pre-recorded lectures (mostly from Harold Torrence) and from TAs.

As an asynchronous class, you have to put in the work to keep up with the lectures. The additional material (textbook, readings, documentaries) were largely unnecessary, as the lectures are mostly comprehensive. (that being said, definitely give the textbook a skim for terms not in the lecture that could pop up in an exam). The lectures themselves were really good -- Professor Torrence is a fun and engaging lecturer and the visuals are easily to follow. The final few lectures by Professor Schuh were also super interesting and fun. The recorded lectures are nice to speed up, pause, and rewind as necessary.

Overall, the course material is pretty easy to grasp. It's fascinating stuff and I wanted to keep learning. Learning IPA and phonology was probably the trickiest part, but it's just memorization. Syntax and morphology can also get you if you don't practice before the exam. The other theoretical stuff is easy to comprehend if you just take good notes. I particularly enjoyed the portions of the class that dealt with social/historical implications of linguistic concepts.

Your grade is largely dependent on the midterm and final, but those were (in my opinion) a lot easier than they were made out to be. Just take good notes and study the tricky stuff in advance, and you should be fine. The homework is open book and super easy, and the two papers are easy and pretty fun to write.

Overall, nice intro to linguistics! Hard to review Prof. Silvestri, as she was largely just the administrator for the course, but the material and work was fun and interesting throughout.

Grading:
2 analysis papers - 15% each
homework - 25%
midterm - 20%
final - 25%

Class:
Super fun and interesting class (if linguistics is interesting to you). The class was asynchronous for me, so it was 2-3 hours of pre-recorded lectures. My discussion section was online, so that meant I could go to any discussion section, which was really nice and flexible. The video lectures were from another lecturer, not this professor. Torrence (the lecturer) is super entertaining and easy to understand. I also loved how much this class attempts to change how people view other languages and dialects. It’s a super refreshing and enlightening perspective on language that I was grateful to experience. I would recommend this class to everyone, though if you know anything about this class, it’s that it’s super hard to get into. If you are an incoming freshman, they save spots in this class during orientation, so have a few devices ready if you want to get this one. If you’re not a incoming freshman, you have to have one of the earliest enrollment times.

Papers:
Both papers were honestly so fun to write. They are graded really easily. The rubric is essentially in the instructions; just make sure to read through them and make sure you hit everything it says so include in your paper. The papers are both informal and interesting!

Exams:
Exams are done through Respondus proctoring. It was fine except it doesn’t tell us if we get flagged for anything. The professor is really understanding though when it comes to flags and such. For my test it kicked me out and I had to continue the test from where I left it, and I emailed the professor and she didn’t mind. The test itself is fair. It’s all multiple choice, so even if you have some trouble with phonetics and IPA, process of elimination is a life saver (esp w those vowels cause remembering those can be difficult). The questions rarely (if not ever) rely on the textbook alone. They are lecture heavy—also be sure to read the required readings (not including textbook) if they are given. Both are 50 questions; midterm is 1.5 hours and final is 3 hours, but you’ll probably need 1 hour each.

Homework:
There are 6 homework quizzes. They are super easy and open book (sometimes they are on other sites but be wary that the test questions are very similar, so try to do these honestly to get a good understanding of how you will do on the exams). They are graded on accuracy.

Textbook:
The textbook can be found online. Even if you can’t find the same version (which you will be able to), the professor accepts other editions. They are also not as important to the course as lectures and provided readings and case studies.

I absolutely loved this class, and it gave me a great interest for linguistics! As most people have mentioned, Silvestri does not directly teach this class. Instead, there are pre-recorded lecture videos by Harrold Torrence. You definitely don't want to fall behind or wait until the last minute to watch the lectures because they are usually pretty long and packed with a ton of information. You need to know pretty much all of that information to do well on the midterm and final. The exams were not open notes, and we did have to have our cameras on while taking them, so make sure you really know your stuff. Learning IPA was probably the most difficult part, but by taking just a few hours to study (I used Quizlet), I was able to get a really good grasp on it. The content was super interesting which made the course extremely worth it to me. Basically, I think you get out of this class what you put into it. If you keep up with the lectures, attend discussion sections, go to your TA with questions (especially for your analysis papers), and make a solid effort, you will do well!

Even though I didn't score the best in this class, I feel like the class is genuinely very well organized and there's an appropriate workload for it. Since it was online, we only had either 2 or 3 one hour long lectures that were very well prepared per week and these were all quite interesting! There are 5 quizzes that we also take online that are quite easy as long as you do the work for those 2 weeks, if you have trouble there are also quizlets that have the answers for all of them. The 2 three page essays were rather leniently graded and very easy to accomplish, took me a couple hours and I was pretty much set.

I took this class in my first quarter and the entire course was asynchronous except for the discussion sections which were online. In regards to the lectures, all of them were pre-recorded and were anywhere from 2-3.5 hours to get through each week. It usually took me a longer time as I took notes and continued to pause the video so if you're like me, it may take 3-5 hours depending on the subject for the week. On top of that, we have readings to get through from the textbook which go from about 15-25 pages a week. While the workload sometimes may feel like a lot, much of what we read in the textbook go over the lectures or simply add a bit more information. As far as this quarter, you can attend any of the discussion sessions even if that wasn't the one you chose. Discussion sections were mostly slide based and went over what we should have learned for the week. They were helpful in just providing examples on what we learned. As far as assignments we had, there were about 6 homework quizzes we needed to do (based on number correct, not completion) but if you did the work for the week, you should be fine. They're simple and were a good portion of our grade. There were two essays we had to do, about 1200-1400 words each, which had to do with comparing two languages and different features (I believe they were 15% each). They were pretty enjoyable actually, definitely not hard and so long as you follow the guidelines you will get full credit. Now to the midterm and final: Both combined were about 45-50% of our grade. Each test had 50 multiple choice questions each and for the midterm we had 1.5 hours to complete it and for the final we had 3 hours. You absolutely do not need all the time in my opinion, especially with the final, but it's good to have extra wiggle room. The content wasn't too hard at all, so long as you kept up and understand the material. I found the subject quite fascinating and actually learned a lot of valuable information. There were some trickier subjects such as phonetics but it's definitely manageable and once you get it, you'll be okay. I didn't have much interaction with Professor Giuseppina, but from email interactions she was very helpful and definitely showed care for the students! If you need a sign to take this class, THIS IS IT! It's an interesting subject to learn about, the work and tests are fairly simple, and it's asynchronous!

I really enjoyed this class! Despite all the lectures being pre-recorded, the material was presented in an engaging way that made the weekly homework super easy to comprehend and complete. There are 2 analysis papers that you are required to complete for this class - both of which are graded super easily and are not difficult to complete. I would say the most difficult parts of this class were the midterm and final, both of which consisted of 50 questions. Double and triple check your answers for these tests, since the answers are not as obvious as they may seem! Overall, I would recommend this class for anybody looking for a simple science GE.

Ling 1 with Silvestri is alright. The course was asynchronous. Silverstri put up the weekly videos, readings, and assignments ahead of time. The lecture videos were not given by the professor herself but by two other professors. They are pretty informative, but incredibly long for no reason. There were weekly assignments in a quiz format and sometimes we had some extra readings or videos to watch. All pretty easy if you spend time with the materials. Discussions are mandatory but for my section, it was the TA just reading slides on the same info as the lectures and readings, so very repetitive. There are two papers for the course which are pretty easy and just ask you to analyze some aspects of the language you speak in comparison to another language. Midterm and final were multiple choice about the content of the course, also pretty easy if you study.

This course was okay for a GE but it isn't anything special. Some of the information is common knowledge and everything else is memorization. Some of the themes of the course were also too ideological for my taste. You don't get any interaction with the professor unless you email her so your grade completely relies on how much effort you put in on the assigned work.

Would recommend as an easy science GE but overall, pretty time-consuming and repetitive.

I felt like I was slightly misled by the reviews or underestimated how much niche content was going to be on the tests because there was a ton of specific information necessary in order to score A's on these tests. There are many lectures, and discussion sections that will help out. IPA might be the most difficult thing to learn, but should not take more than a day to memorize. I felt as if the content of the tests were split between broad topics that you had to apply that were similar to the homework and random facts from slides throughout the quarter. I believe it is possible that I would have done better had a took a deeper and more focused look into the lectures. Overall, not super fun class but definitely manageable and certainly not a bad GE to take.

This is an easy class if you know another language in addition to English. We have near weekly multiple choice homework assignments, two 1200-word writing assignments comparing two languages (hence you need knowledge of a non-English language. The writing assignments have very clear instructions so it's very easy to meet the word count), and a midterm and final, both multiple choice.
If you take good notes on the lectures and understand all the homework, you will ace this class. Reading the textbook is not needed.

Grading scheme:
20% Discussion Attendance
15% Homework Quizzes (6 total, online, not timed, take home)
30% Midterm Exam
35% Final Exam

A lot of people say this class can be difficult because you have to learn academic notation, especially for syntax, but I'd say the material is mostly conceptual understanding and if you have the patience to read through the online textbook Silvestri provides and take some good notes the exams shouldn't be difficult. On topics such as ambiguity there were a bunch of hints and on the 65 point final theres was a 5 point extra credit. If you participate in some psychology experiments (which shouldn't take more than 3 hours) you'll get an extra 3% added to your overall grade. Discussion participation is worth a whopping 20% so it's easy to boost your grade in this class. The quizzes aren't difficult at all and there's plenty of instances where you can find the answer in the textbook.

Silvestri herself is super sweet and it's clear she knows the material inside out and backwards. If you're more interested in linguistics like I am and approach her with linguistic theories and previous research/projects she'd be happy to discuss them with you. She was just as excited about the content I talked about as I was. The TAs give practice problems and solutions every week, which was really helpful for the exams.

I'd rush to take her next class.