Prof Elson is extremely picky and sometimes condescending. He spends about 5-10 minutes of every class explaining his cell phone policy--no cell phones ON, if it goes off, you automatically fail the course. It is a waste of time and more distracting than encouraging to a learning environment. The material isn't too difficult, just memorize the phonetic alphabet and pay attention in class.

This class was not as interesting as I had hoped, but it laid a good foundation in linguistics that I have used many times since finishing the course. Professor Elson is nice enough, but his cell phone policy is a tad ridiculous.

This is a great class. Elson is a very interesting professor. He gets very persnickety about certain things, but if you follow his rules, you'll be fine. Use proper grammar and punctuation when writing assignments, and he is SERIOUS about his cell phone policy. He gets a bit off task sometimes, but his tangents are often amusing. The class material itself is interesting, and you end up learning a lot. It's a great class even if you're not a linguistics or anthropology major.

One of the most effective teachers I had as a first year. This is due to his 30+ years of experience! He's extremely clear in lecture and always summarize the material at the beginning and the end of class. His grading is very fair, and his demands are actually really reasonable. He expects the same professionalism from his students that he delivers, simply as that.