The lecturer was Harold Torrence. I loved this class -- it was supposed to just be a GE, but it was so so interesting. In terms of workload, there are two analysis papers that are 1200 words long; the research took some time (like 1-2 days) but overall the papers are not unreasonable at all (and the TAs graded fairly!). We also get weekly open book quizzes based on the online lectures. The midterm and final were also not difficult at all if you paid attention to the lectures.

The asynchronous format can make it really easy to fall behind, but the flexibility was convenient for midterms/finals season. Lecture videos are taught by Professor Torrence and are very clear and thorough--although I borrowed the textbook from YRL for the quarter, the lectures and discussions were sufficient enough such that I didn't need to reference it at all.

Homework is fairly light (roughly every other week, untimed, and open note/textbook/website), but still lock in for these because they make up 25% of your grade.

The two analysis papers (each worth 15%) were pretty chill. Give yourself a few days to do them, follow the instructions carefully, and it should be easy to get an A on them.

The midterm and final were very doable with some studying. I personally fed my lecture notes and the discussion slides into NotebookLM and asked it to generate quiz questions and flashcards. For more technical units (phonetics, morphology, and syntax), practice questions during discussion and the extra resources were helpful. You do have to memorize IPA for the phonetics unit, but a vowel chart is embedded into the exam.

Overall, would take this class again. Just make sure to not fall too far behind, and it should be very doable :)

I took this class over summer with Nicco A. La Mattina, but the async lectures were from Professor Motter. The class itself is GREAT it was super fun material, the content was managable, and the weekly quizzes were not too difficult. My TA, however, was CRAZY STRICT on the grading for no reason. It's literally a GE introductory class, no way you're handing out C's and D's like they're candy on Halloween. I know I'm a good writer and I have never gotten anything below an A- on any paper I've ever written, but for some reason I failed this one?? I don't know about the other TA's, but mine specifically mentioned she had TA'ed for this class several times and knew the course inside and out, which maybe is why she doing too much for this course and failing essays over nothing. She says its because you need to cite all your sources (which I did) and if you don't, you get an automatic 0, but I guess if you don't cite common sense either you get a 0. I thought she seemed super nice and knowledgable, but honestly taking useless citations so seriously is dtm in my opinion. I honestly just have to take the L on this one because my overall grade wasn't even that bad because the course itself is super straight forward and honestly a lot of fun, but if you got Erika Yagi as your TA....good luck bro ur gonna need it.