EL1101E: The Nature of Language
Content
Content is light and easy to understand. Topics taught include phonology, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, morphology, phonetics, etc. The textbook isn’t really necessary (I stopped reading it by Week 4) – the lecture handouts and tutorial questions are more than sufficient.
Workload
Very light. Weekly one-hour tutorial sessions and each tutorial worksheet can usually be completed in about 10-30 minutes (for me). There was also a group project to be done during the middle of the semester, but nothing too difficult.
Exams
Midterm and Final – Both in MCQ-format.
Group Project
Tutorial Presentation – Basically you and your group will have to take over the role of the tutor for 1 tutorial session, and present your answers for one of the tutorial worksheets to the class.
The midterm and final paper were really easy, so everyone’s going to do well here. The group project and presentation is what will determine if you get that A or not. Average marks for the midterms were ~75. I scored 87 for it, and 20/20 for the project.
Personal Experience
Hands down the easiest and slackest mod I took in Sem 1. I spent the least amount of time on this module and literally only studied a day before the actual final exam. To be honest, I didn’t have a good first impression of it. The IPA was completely foreign to me and freaked me out in the beginning, I thought ‘wtf have I gotten myself into?’ but it actually turned out to be really easy and fun.
Bell curve may be a little steep, though, because of how easy the content is. I have friends who also found this to be the easiest mod they took among others, but ended up with B/B+ grades. Anyway, I would recommend this module to anyone. Easily my favourite mod among the 5 mods I took.
Grade
A-
Pulled down by the group presentation. My partner and I literally spent only 10 minutes (less than that in fact) creating the powerpoint slides and didn’t prepare for the presentation, we just winged it on the spot in front of the class. On hindsight it’s better to prepare what you’re going to say and how you’re going to explain your solutions to the class beforehand so that you won’t stumble and have many many awkward pauses during the actual presentation.
EC1101E: Introduction to Economic Analysis
Content
Nothing too heavy. Micro is quite similar to what was taught in JC H2 Economics, so those who took economics in JC before will have a slight advantage over those who don’t. Macro content, on the other hand, is very different but not difficult once you get the hang of it.
Textbook is useful. I read only the macro content, didn’t really need it for micro.
Workload
Weekly one-hour tutorial sessions. Tutorials are easy and good practice for the exams. We’re supposed to present and explain our tutorial solutions to the class, but because of time constraints my tutor only had us write down our solutions and she would ‘explain’ (inverted commas because she doesn’t actually explain, she just ‘tells’ the answer without really explaining). Easy to clinch the tutorial participation marks.
Exams
Tutorial Participation
Midterm and Final – MCQs and Short Answer Questions. The lecturer actually extended our midterm exam duration by 5 minutes (I think because they knew most people were still scribbling like madmen a minute before the end, desperately trying to finish the paper) but I still didn’t complete the paper on time haha. As for the finals, I left about 10 marks (most likely more) of questions blank/incomplete because of the lack of time.
Personal Experience
Not much to say. Fairly easy module and the first lecturer (the one who taught micro) was very good. I didn’t really like the macro lecturer though, during every single one of his lectures I had to struggle not to fall asleep. My tutor wasn’t exactly great or helpful, I attended tutorials only for the tutorial participation marks.
Grade
A-
SE1101E: Southeast Asia: A Changing Region
Content
Religion, fashion, food, migration, power, gender in past and present Southeast Asia. I read all of the readings – most were very interesting, and few were boring and imo, not very useful or helpful for the exams. The readings are good sources for examples to use in the exam.
Workload
Two-hour tutorial sessions once every two weeks. No preparation is needed, all we do in tutorials is sit in groups and discuss. There was a 2000-word individual essay we had to do, and we could write an essay on anything about either 1) religion or 2) ethnicity.
Exams
Tutorial Participation – 10%
Midterm – 1 essay in 45 minutes
Final – 1 compulsory question and 1 3-choose-1 essay in 2 hours
I was quite sure I would have to S/U this module after sitting for the midterms, but surprisingly I scored an A for it. I think as long as you answer the essay question directly, you’ll do fairly well for the exams. Don’t ramble on and on and go off topic, just answer the question and give a few relevant examples and you’ll be fine.
Oh, the lecturer also drops A LOT of obvious hints for the exams. I don’t think anyone was surprised by the compulsory question in the finals.
Personal Experience
I LOVED the lectures! We missed a few because the lecture either fell on a no-school day or the lecturer was sick… and I’m being completely honest when I say I hated missing the lectures. The lecturer (Irving Johnson) was very entertaining, by far the best lecturer I had compared to all my other lecturers for the other modules.
Tutorials, on the other hand… I hated them ._. All we did was sit in groups and talk crap for 2 hours – my tutor did not say a single word. All she did was have us talk and she would nod or shake her head, wtf. I learned absolutely nothing new from my tutorials, and towards the end I skipped a few. Dreaded every tutorial lesson because I hate group discussions (it’s very hard for me to speak up in group situations, damn social anxiety) and I’m fairly certain I got a zero for my tutorial participation marks. Eh. Other than the way the tutorials were conducted, I loved everything else about this module.
Grade
A-
SC1101E: Making Sense of Society
Content
Power, family, culture, religion, class & stratification, deviance, ageing, gender & sexuality, race & ethnicity. Unlike SE1101E, the readings for SC1101E are very, very, VERY BORING and dull and dry and uninteresting. I read only the Week 1 & 2 readings and then stopped. Did not read any of the readings from Week 3 onwards.
Workload
Two-hour tutorial sessions once every two weeks. Not much preparation is needed, although you might want to prepare some responses to the tutorial questions to contribute to group discussion. There was one short essay assignment early in the semester, I did it in a day not expecting much from it and was pleasantly surprised to end up with an A-.
Exams
Midterm – 4-choose-1 essay in 1 hour
Final – Section A 3-choose-1 and Section B 3-choose-1 essays in 2 hours
Whether you do well or not depends on your bullshitting skills? Haha for the midterms, I did a question on power-culture despite not having studied culture at all, and only briefly studying power (I had pinned all my hopes on the topic on family but it wasn’t tested, damn it) and ended up with an A. I think taking SE1101E at the same time helped me quite a bit, because I used a lot of the examples I learned in SE1101E readings in the SC1101E exam – seeing as how I didn’t complete the SC readings.
Personal Experience
Did not like this module at all. The lecturers were really really BORING, and by Week 4 I had stopped attending lectures and only watched the webcasts instead. Initially I was a little overwhelmed by all the theories and sociologists, like Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Foucault, etc etc and having to remember who-said-what. I’d thought that this module was supposed to be rather open-ended. I was lucky to get a good tutor, and unlike SE1101E he didn’t just have us sit and talk in groups for the entire lesson, but actually wrote on the whiteboard and TAUGHT us. Still, I did not like this module at all. I found it dry, boring, and tedious. And by the middle of the semester, I was just hoping to be able to pass and S/U the module since I was pretty sure I would do very badly for the midterms and finals.
Grade
A-
GEK1505: Living with Mathematics
Content
AP/GP, P&C, sets, graphing, clocking, coding, enciphering, probability. Textbook is completely and utterly useless, I regret buying it. A complete waste of money.
Workload
Weekly one-hour tutorial sessions. Tutorials are unmarked, there’s no need for us to present our solutions or talk in class. The tutor will write the answers on the whiteboard and answers are also uploaded onto IVLE.
Exams
Midterm – Short-answer questions, write down answers without any working needed, and two questions with working needed
Final – Pretty much the same format as the midterm, but with more questions
I scored 14/30 for the midterm and probably did a lot worse for the finals, seeing as how I left maybe 15~ (most likely more) marks of questions blank/incomplete, and I’m sure even with the questions that I did complete I had quite a few incorrect answers.
Personal Experience
Before taking this module, I’d read reviews about it on other blogs. The consensus was that this is a damn easy module with a steep bell curve. So I went ahead and took it because I love Math and Math has always been my strongest subject since secondary school. I thought this module would be a breeze, I thought it would be the easiest mod I had out of the 5 I took, I thought I would love it. Warning: rant ahead.
I THOUGHT WRONG. Really regretted taking this shitty module. The lecturer is shitty as hell.
He talks in circles. “So, B multiplied by C gives you D.” “Take B and C and multiply them together and you get D.” “D is what you get when you multiply B with C.” “B and C multiplied together gives you D.” YES YES YES I heard you the first frigging time…. you don’t have to repeat the same freaking point ten times in 1 minute ._.
He doesn’t explain, merely reads off the lecture slides, and hems and haws every 20 seconds. Because I’m blind and I can’t read it myself?!? Damn useless.
Worst lecturer of my semester. I thought he’d be the worst teacher I ever had, but no, that honour goes to my GEK1505 tutor. Yes, the lecturer is bad, but the tutor is about 5 times worse. I didn’t think it possible until I met him.
Firstly his accent is so thick that it’s difficult making out what he’s saying. To make it worse he’s always mumbling to the whiteboard and speaking so insanely fast that I don’t understand a word he says. Once I tried recording him in class so I could play back later, but just gave up. I let my friends hear the recording and they were like, what language is this?
And just like the lecturer, my tutor doesn’t explain. Merely writes his answers on the whiteboard and “explains” by simply reading out every step he wrote. Like, “first do this, then we do this, next we do this, lastly we do this. Ta da, answer is this.” By the third lesson, only about an average of 5 students showed up for tutorials every week. Really, DAMN USELESS.
Maybe if I didn’t have such a shitty lecturer and tutor, I wouldn’t hate this mod as much as I did. But, I did struggle quite a lot with the topics in the beginning, self-studied everything by myself and did manage to make some sense of it. I did like the topics on Coding and Enciphering, but beyond that I just flat out hated this module. I completely gave up on studying probability, the last topic – I did not do the tutorial at all, and I left all the probability questions in the final exam blank and incomplete.
tldr; I HATED THIS MODULE. A LOT.
Grade
B
A miracle I didn’t fail. I already knew I would be S/U-ing this module by Week 3.
theoryoflies 