Course Syllabus

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS

Instructor: Patrick Farrell
Office hours: W 2:00-3:00 PM (or by appointment), 279 Kerr Hall
530-848-2874 (mobile)
pmfarrell@ucdavis.edu

TA contact information, office hours, and section assignments are shown on the HOME page

The COURSE GRADE is to be computed from average scores (on a 100 point scale) for assignments and activities that are weighted, summed, and converted to a letter grade. The TEST scores combined have a weight of 40%. The TERM PROJECT score, the PARTICIPATION score, and the score for DISCUSSIONS/COLLABORATIONS are each worth 20%. The total score for the course is rounded up to a whole number in order to convert to a letter grade:

If the rounded sum is ≥ 98 then A+
otherwise, if ≥ 93 then A
otherwise, if ≥ 90 then A-
otherwise, if ≥ 88 then B+
otherwise, if ≥ 83 then B, and so on

You can earn up to 100 points for participation. Points can be accumulated in the following ways:

1. up to 50 points for online course activity (amount + quiz scores)
2. up to 40 points for attendance in weekly section meetings
3. 10 points for registering on ARKAIVE for attendance and correctly setting up your Canvas profile, with photo of yourself and your Google Drive account registered
4. up to 10 points for particularly effective contributions to online discussions and collaborations
5. up to 10 points for an outstanding term project, such as one that yields a document or video that can be part of this course in the future

For the participation score, points just accumulate in various score categories and are summed and added to the grading schema at the end of the course. It's possible to get more than the maximum of 100. If this happens, it could, in principle, provide motivation for bumping you to a higher grade category in case of a really close call (such as a total course score on the borderline of an A-, like 89.4). You should also bear in mind that only exceptional results will yield points in the ways described in #4 and #5 above and that the default score for these is 0. More details about the scoring procedure for participation can be found in the description of the assignment PARTICIPATION SUMMED, which is the name of the column in the grade book where the summed participation score will be entered at the end of the quarter.

ATTENDANCE will be taken at the weekly face-to-face class meetings (sections) using Arkaive.com.

How this works is that you download the Akaive app and sign up or sign in with your UC Davis name and email address and the enrollment code shown below for your section. Then, you make sure that location services are turned on on your device and register your presence in the classroom during the first 25 minutes of each section meeting (and no earlier than 5 minutes before the official start time). If you have to miss any section meeting, you can either attend a different one, by simply using the enrollment code for that section to register your attendance, or request an excusal through the Arkaive app. For more information, click here.

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The various assignments and assessments will be made available in a staggered fashion, such that everyone is working on the same topics in the same time frame. There is a summary of the various ASSIGNMENTS at the bottom of this page. But, you can also click on ASSIGNMENTS in the menu on the left for a slightly different view. They should also show up on your CALENDAR and in your Canvas notifications, which you can adjust to your liking, using ACCOUNT (top of far left menu) > NOTIFICATIONS.

If you want to read a standard textbook that covers the same topics that this course does, some potentially viable choices are: Fromkin and Rodman, Language Files, and Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. Look for older editions to save money, as the newer editions generally aren't much different.