ANTH 2410

Prof. Lefowtiz was extremely disorganized, which made lectures repetitive and also made our group work extra difficult. Speaking of group work, we had to meet in small groups in between each class, which added an hour or two of work time to every week. Also, often times we wondered what our worksheets had to do with the material from class. On top of all this, he would often tell us we were doing things wrong quite harshly or nitpick students' responses in class which didn’t encourage people to talk and often led to awkward silences.

TLDR: This class dealt with interesting material, so I wanted to love it, but it was so disorganized and poorly done. Don’t recommend with this professor.

I really wanted to like this class, but many things drove me to being neutral at best. Professor Lefkowitz is definitely passionate and knowledgeable about the subject, and you can tell he has a passion for sharing what's in the course content. But to me, at least, the way he lectured just didn't have any impact on me. I personally prefer when a professor can provide some expert insight into a topic that I won't get from the readings, and in my eyes, the class didn't have moments like that often. He also went through the lecture slides very quickly, so I had to go back in Canvas and fill in my notes for every class. Also, he's one of those professors who will ask questions and when someone answers, he'll say "good thought but not what I was looking for." Some people hate that and some people don't mind, but don't say I didn't warn you. Also, the content feels very surface-level, and I feel like I could have deduced a lot of the more sociological topics just from personal experience.

All the homework is group-work, so if you weren't lucky with your group, you'd probably end up dragging your feet trying to get people to do their part for the 2 homeworks per week. The homework assignments themselves were easy though, and a very fair workload. The readings could be pretty long (30+ pages and sometimes up to 50) and would have a lot of strange vocabulary, and honestly I think I skimmed 75% of them if not more. There are pop reading quizzes, definitely more frequently at the end of the semester (at the end of the semester it was pretty much every class).

But honestly I think one of the worst things is the attendance policy. For attendance, you can only miss 1 reading quiz before getting points off your grade, and you can't have your absence excused if you have a travel conflict (like flying home for break) or if you're sick. Absences are only if you miss multiple classes for illness or sports traveling or other UVA arranged events. People would still come to class sick because that type of absence isn't excused, and I genuinely think people passed COVID or the hooflu around the class from that. Especially in light of the pandemic, I think that his attendance policy is one of the worst I've heard of.

Overall, I would say only take this class if you really have to. I'm sure other classes have more interesting content and have attendance policies that don't put other students at risk for getting sick. #tCFF23

All in all this class was interesting and covered a graduation requirement. I can't say I LOVED it since it was a lot of readings which didn't always seem to relate to the lecture content but it was a good class to take. The most tedious part was the group assignments that you have to do outside of class between classes which usually you cannot meet in person for due to schedule conflicts so people have to either FaceTime or just divide the work out. Not a very very hard class but definitely need to do the readings and stay on the lectures. This is a good class to cover a requirement but make sure you go to class all semester long and pay attention. This class can get out of hand if you lose track of readings and topics. Grading was mostly group worksheet and discussion based with 2 exams and a paper.

Lefkowitz is great! He’s pretty engaging and has a lot of energy, so I enjoyed going to lectures. He records lectures and posts powerpoint slides, and he also asked for mid semester feedback from students. Grading was based on attendance and reading checks (10%), group worksheets (20%), midterm exam (20%), final exam (30%), and discussion section (20%). For the reading check you answer 1 multiple choice question about the reading, which you should be able to get it right if you at least skimmed. The reading checks happen about once per week, but some weeks it’s just attendance checks (just write your name on an index card). You have a group worksheet due before each class that you work on with a group outside of class. The worksheets usually take under an hour and are easy if you paid attention in class. The exams weren’t too hard, and were easier and shorter than a lot of people anticipated. He gave review guides and held zoom review sessions for exams. His grading was a bit harsh (midterm average was a B+ but he’s picky). The tests were mostly a mix of short answer (give definitions that are straight out of the textbook) and long answer (give examples and insights, go beyond the answer, writing more is better). You can also pick which questions you respond to (ex. respond to 5 out of 8 prompts). Discussion section grade varies by TA, but for us it was mostly attendance and participation. My biggest problem with this class was the amount of reading. It was about 40 pages per class, and when we got to the second textbook it was more like 80-100 pages per class (idk for sure because I stopped reading halfway through the semester). Some of the readings seemed really interesting, but there was just so much and I felt burned out. At the very least, read the abstract, intro, and conclusion and you’ll probably be set for the reading quizzes. He says his exams focus on material from the readings, but his lectures summarized the readings well enough that I could answer exam questions about them without actually reading the articles. The textbooks are free online and all other articles were on collab.

Overall it was an interesting class and I recommend it for anyone with any interest in linguistics, just be aware that it's a lot of reading.

Professor Lefkowitz is clearly passionate about the subject and I personally thought he was a good lecturer who explained textbook concepts pretty well. I found the class pretty accessible for someone who had never taken a linguistics class before (I took this for the cognitive science major), even though it can be overwhelming at first. There's a lot of terms thrown at you but for the tests you need to focus more on broad concepts and how they relate to society, rather than the more technical details of how people in different cultures speak.

However, this class was a LOT of reading. I think it was probably around 90 pages a week, most of it from a textbook + other articles (which could be really interesting or really boring/complicated to understand, depending). It was a bit much. Sometimes I would come out of the reading just straight up not understanding what it had meant. When we got to the second textbook, it was around 120-140 pages a week. It went by a bit faster because I found it more interesting but it still had a lot of complicated terms we hadn't talked about in class. I did start slacking on the readings near the end of the semester and it was rough trying to catch up by reading so many pages over the weekend.

Attendance is mandatory, and he also has surprise reading quizzes which are pretty common-sense if you read and got the MAIN idea. The 1 midterm wasn't bad he gives a really in-depth study guide beforehand which was really nice. I think the class average was a B or something and that can be easily boosted with the many group assignments (usually 1-2 per week). Personally I did not enjoy these assignments. It was weird trying to coordinate with people solely outside of class (since we never had enough time to talk about them in class) and it was annoying when some people didn't pull their weight. However, it's pretty easy to do well on them. The discussion section grades also seemed kind of arbitrary, but they were helpful for reinforcing concepts learned during lecture. The final was also not bad and as long as you study big ideas you should be fine.

I took this class to fulfill a requirement but I wish I had taken another class. I felt as though the readings were very dense and the material was a lot for an intro class that doesn't require any prerequisites. He assigns 2 readings each class that are about 40 pages long, and there are spontaneous reading checks throughout the semester so you have to go to class. Sometimes he assigns entire chapters to read per class that are like 50 pages too, plus another article on top of that. A lot of them are unnecessarily repetitive, in my opinion, and pretty dense. This class also has a lot of group work throughout the semester, which are mainly just worksheets. They weren't that hard, but it really just depends on if you get a good group of people. For exams, he gives study guides so I would advise to use those thoroughly because the exams follow those pretty directly. He does go over the readings in lectures but we would run out of time often. I did learn about sociolinguistics but I found it to be boring and excessive in some places.

I took this class to fulfill a requirement but I definitely recommend it. The workload isn't high, just readings for homework that are then discussed further in class. Prof Lefkowitz is a great lecturer and very chill. Though he doesn't take attendance, there are random reading quizzes to make sure you show up. The readings aren't hard to understand but some of them can be long. As long as you pay attention in class and go to the discussions you can do well in the class.