For someone who has been teaching this course for a while, Saunders was remarkably unprepared. The course dragged on with no visible purpose or direction, and while the first half was somewhat structured, the second half was horribly confusing, vague, and disorganized. Made it hard to do well past the first test. You must also be very interested in the material in order to do well in this course. It's recommended to take Phonetics before this, but I didn't feel that it was necessary to understand the material she rambled on about.

Great class if you're really interested in the history of the french language and don't mind working from a strong linguistics standpoint, which Saunders is an expert in. Doesn't demand too much work, but lots of memorization is key for doing well on the midterm and final.