ANTH 2430

I read all the reviews for this course before taking it, fully understanding that it's more linguistics than anthropology focused and being okay with that. However, I regret this. You don't actually have to attend class to do the assignments. Dobrin lectures by putting a list of languages or grammatical exercises on the projector and just talking, which isn't that fun because you'll be talking about the grammatical features of a language, but you know nothing about the people who speak it or where it is spoken. With more context, this course could be a lot better. Also, I want to echo what other reviews say about the problem sets. I spent several hours on some of them and got a B and then only an hour or two on some and got an A, which was aggravating. That being said, Dobrin is incredibly nice and Josh is the coolest. They spend a significant part of the course talking about their own research, which I found interesting. The bottom line is: the course wasn't awful, but it lacks focus.

I just want to preface this by saying that Professor Dobrin and Josh are two of the nicest people I've met at UVA, and they did their best explaining material that was of absolutely no interest to almost all of the class. That said, this high of a rating for such a terrible class is ridiculous. The grading is incredibly subjective; you could put one hour into the homework assignments that are given throughout the semester and get an A and feel like you gained no knowledge on the subject, and you could just as easily put four to six hours into it, learn a lot, and get a B.

The material is not anthropology. Sure, it's about languages and many cultures identify with a particular language, but Professor Dobrin herself ensures you that this class is nothing about cultures at the beginning of the semester and entirely about languages. She wasn't exaggerating, and linguistics has to be the worst subject I've ever had the displeasure of learning. I may have learned a few neat fun facts over the semester, but I definitely didn't learn anything I'll ever apply to future coursework or my post-college experiences. In the end, this is probably one of the most frustrating and unexciting courses I've taken at UVA, and easily one of the worst classes I've had the displeasure of sitting through for an entire semester. I would not recommend.

A very laid-back introduction to linguistics. Dobrin uses the first couple of weeks to give you a basic understanding of the linguistic principles of phonetics, morphology, and syntax. The rest of the semester is a "show and tell" of interesting linguistic phenomena across the globe. There are 5 problems sets and one 10 page paper on a minor language. Dobrin and her T.A. were very good about providing guidance and feedback on these assignments. Although I did all the reading because I thought it was interesting, you could probably get away without it pretty easily.

I'm a Spanish linguistics major, so I was excited to learn about other languages. This class fell very short of my expectations. The professors in the Spanish department know far beyond the classes they teach, and Prof. Dobrin seems to barely know the material. She could never answer student questions because they "weren't in her research area" even though they seemed pretty straightforward. The homeworks are long and tedious, and she sends them out on Wednesday and they're due on Monday. Lecture was boring as hell and pretty useless. I think the TA would be a much better professor for this class.

The grade is based on homework sets (80%) and a research paper on an endangered language (20%). If you do the readings and go to lecture, the homework sets are not difficult. They are long and tedious, but manageable.

This class was interesting enough, but coming to lecture seems a little useless. There are no tests, just a research paper that you work on throughout the semester and turn in rough drafts of each part for feedback, and a homework every other week or so. The homeworks come straight out of the book, so as far as I can tell, most of what we talk about in class is basically just for fun... But Dobrin is very nice and excited about what she teaches.

This class's content is divided into three parts: 1. Learning different elements of language (which she spends weeks on & goes over pretty well to make sure you get it for the rest of the semester), 2. Looking at unique aspects of languages across the continents (just sit in class and listen), and 3. Looking at language relationships and the future state of languages (which was super interesting to read and talk about -- this class is very focused on dying languages). I really liked Lise; she was the definition of a professor so interested in something that it makes the class interesting. She brought in cool guest speakers. And there are NO TESTS OR FINALS. Just six homework assignments and a research paper you turn in in parts throughout the semester. The discussion is really optional attendance, but so helpful for HW. You need the six books for HW assignments, but NOT necessary to read them in any detail at all. I went in with no linguistics background, and really really liked this class. If you think you might be interested, don't let other reviews stop you form taking it -- it's cool class with a great grade distribution.

This class was so boring, and the curriculum was all over the place. If you are a hardcore linguistics student you might enjoy the extremely technical HW and boring lectures, but otherwise this class was NOT worth it. The HWs are hard and time-consuming, and I still don't feel like I learned much. The only good thing about this class is that there's no final, just a final paper. Prof. Dobrin means well but isn't a good lecturer. Don't take this class unless you have to

The class was very interesting, especially because Prof.Dobrin is very passionate about this subject. The homework assignments are often tedious, but the course is overall very worth taking. (This is from a linguistics major's p.o.v.)

Prof. Dobrin is a nice and approachable lady, but she doesn't realize that her assignments are each extraordinarily time consuming. Be warned: this course is exclusively, tediously, and unfortunately centered around grammar. It delves way too deep into worthless grammatical terms with the expectation that you have a background on many formal words used to describe grammar (morphological/morphosyntactic/phonemic/phonetic etc) and other such terms which I was unaware I had to be familiar with. For an introductory level linguistics course, this was a large vampire that sucked my blood and almost left me lifeless.