ANTH 2430

Armik is a lovely guy, if a little scatterbrained at times. Lectures are decently interesting, and they lean heavily on dying / smaller languages. He will always give helpful, thorough feedback on homework, even if it means it takes him awhile to grade it. Homework is rare, but takes a long time to complete, so don't save it for the night before! Only a few assignments per semester (other than readings, which are more important for discussion than for lecture). If languages don't come naturally to you, they might be slightly difficult, but he holds office hours regularly and is more than willing to guide you through things if you take advantage of them!

Armik is a lovely professor and a very sweet person. That makes me feel bad for how little effort I put into this class. I think that the best way to describe it would be that this class is set up largely so that you will be successful as long as you put a lot of effort in when homeworks and projects are assigned. The weekly quizzes are open book which is great, but the homeworks can be tricky because you have to very seriously apply what is covered in class. Do not be afraid to reach out to Armik or the TA because they are more than willing to help you on homeworks. In previous years, the final assignment was to write a research paper on a language, but this semester we were given a group project instead, which was much more manageable than a paper would have been. Would recommend to anyone looking to fulfill the linguistics requirement or is a language nerd.

This was a fantastic intro course to the Linguistics major (as I've heard 3250 is kind of rough for newbies). I definitely felt like I learned a lot and this course has helped me a lot in the Ling classes I've taken since. That being said, it was a huge mistake to take this class at 8:00 AM. Professor Mirzayan is so sweet and by a longshot not the worst lecturer I've had here, but he speaks very very softly, making it really easy to doze off. The only good thing to come out of getting sent home for Covid was that this class went asynchronous. I would absolutely take another class with him, just not in the morning. Grades came from a few worksheet packets that we're usually simple enough if you did the readings, a multiple-choice midterm, and a final research paper on an endangered language of your choice. It was a lot of work, but there are checkpoints to keep you on track, and it's by far one of the most rewarding assignments I've ever completed at UVA. Highly, highly recommend this class to everyone with an interest in global studies/humanities but especially to Linguistics majors!

Armik is a very nice man but just not a good lecturer, the lectures became so so boring but in the end the lectures really do not matter. You have a small quiz on collab through your discussion every week, super easy just pull up the readings for the week and search for answer, discussions are super chill. 4 major homeworks through out semester, GO TO OH or watch the OH recordings and get as good of grade on them as possible, not super hard but confusing. Then one major 10 page research paper at end of semester, not too bad because they split it up in 3 sections and you have to write 2 of them before finals week. The grading is the worst, had 3 HWs and final paper not graded right up until the very end, somehow I ended with an A and so did many others. If you dont mind not knowing your grade all year take it. Your TA will be your best friend they are 10/10 would not have an A without them (shoutout Taylor!)

I took this class when it was Professor Armik's first time teaching. I heard that he ramped things up a bit afterwards, but I ended up with an A in his class. Overall, I would say the effort needed for class really fluctuated. He had big homework packets due every couple weeks that made up a chunk of our grade. He ended up dropping one at the end of the school year, so it was okay if you end up messing up pretty badly on one. The major component of your grade was a 10 page paper on a language due instead of a final exam. It was pretty daunting at first, but you submit parts of it in waves to get it checked for progress and a completion grade. 10 pages surprisingly fill up pretty easily if you put in tables and examples. My tips for surviving his class: take it with friends, check your homeworks before submitting with your TA if you can, get stuff done early, use discussion section like OH to ask your TA questions, and just show up to discussion. Review his lecture slides when you can since those will give you those keywords you need for assignments and the paper. It was maybe a little bit more work compared to the other professor, but definitely not a lot of work. Super manageable as long as you didn't miss deadlines.