Comentários e feedback de alunos de Milagres da Linguagem Humana: Introdução à Lingüística da instituição Universidade de Leiden

The ethnologue is a mess, and I don't think a linguistics course should depend on a website to pass not only some questions, but almost half of a module, because you can understand perfectly what people is saying about their languages and you can formulate accurate questions that can be answered with the information given, and not researching in a web that has different content than the course provides, or changes the numbers, or absolutely ignore some important facts of languages searched.

It is a decent course that teaches the very basics of linguistics. It covers the topics of a Linguistics 101 course but no topic is explored in depth. It seems that some of the topics mentioned are barely even touched (e.g., Week 5 - Language in the Brain). Professor Oostendorp is a good lecturer but the lectures are not presented for easy notetaking. You should be prepared to make your own notes from the video lectures given few summaries/bulleted lists/etc.

I watched all the videos, but did not do the coursework.

I was a total beginner on the subject. The videos were very well made, and quite nice to watch.

However, I feel like the material was a bit too easy for my taste. I would have enjoyed a course that delved into "harder things".

For someone who doesn't like as much "hard challenges" as I do, I do think that this course is a nice introduction to the subject.

I've watched the first module and it was good.

Only that the website that we are supposed to get the answers for the first week's quiz ( the last 5-6 questions ) from, is not working. And I have to take the quiz several times to find the answers. Please do something about it for the future learners, thank you.

I thought this class was very interesting, but I, like many others, was frustrated by the quizzes. Also, I tried to do the first honors assignment, but was at a big disadvantage using a language I don't know. How am I supposed to come up with counter examples when I don't know the language?

Hard to understand with the accents at times and I have gone through the videos while trying to find an answer for the quiz and it was never mentioned in the video so sometimes the quizzes don't match what was taught. Otherwise, I learned a lot.

Very intersting but very time-consuming: in order to pass the tests with its tricky and detail-focused questions you need to read the questions carefuly and review all material a second time.

I was expecting that the course would cover IPA in-depth. It's pretty unconscionable that an intro linguistics course would not pay deep attention to this topic.

The quizzes in this class were the most difficult and confusing. I have had dozens of Coursera classes, but this course was the most troublesome.

I think this course has interesting participants however I found it difficult to follow and did not do well in this course.

It is a good course for an introducion to Linguistics. However, it is a ittle technical

I had a great and much needed introduction.

Tiffany B.

There were a lot fo sloppy mistakes in the videos, I looked up a lot fo the stuff up outside of the course (which I had to because it was explained to me on the course like i was a 5 year old) then when i tried to give genuinely thought out answers from my outside readings the course said it was wrong, i don't know who to believe but i have to beieve it is the course because there have been a number of times when a concept hasn't been explained in depth enough and the quiz has not reflected the quizzes. also a lot of the time the outside reading does not reflect the lectures, i did like the informants but this wasn't recapped and none of my errors were corrected before i had to go in to the quiz. You could add more videos after the informants to explain what we should have been looking for. Sometimes the task during this wasn' made explicitly clear. I did like the phonology part, that was fairly traightforward and well explained.

The course and videos are wonderful the speakers are engaging and the content fascinating. As a more casual student I am finding the quizzes far too difficult. I am a very smart person and I am struggling with understanding the phonetic alphabet and other very technical aspects of this course. I will be dropping the course because while I wanted to learn the concepts I do not have the time or patience to get that granular for a course of this type.

Interesting content, but issues with broken links needed to complete quizzes while they were due. Needs better explanation of how to use other resources. Many of the quiz questions are arbitrary, rather than really testing knowledge gained in the class. The lectures are still useful, and would recommend doing this as a free course, but see no use in paying for a certificate on completion of the course.

Instructions were confusing or absent in parts of the course. See forum. I also was left with no practical application of what I learned. I enjoyed the studies which showed language changing within cultural divisions

Very slow moving. Feels like you have to sit through a lot for very obvious information. I would recommend http://ielanguages.com/linguistics/ for a more detailed and more concise introduction.

no question that prof is very educated and knowledgeable but course was not quite what i expected.

I find the content not well structure

the quizzes can be trivial and misleading.

Interesting but way too difficult to pass the weekly exams.

In short, DO NOT PURCHASE this course. I can only recommend the videos and sources it offers, everything else felt like a frustrating mess. I will go into much more detail below.

I thought that the information would be interesting and thought-provoking. I was only partially correct, however. The professor was engaging and enthusiastic, but almost no other parts of the course felt "finished".

First, in the lessons, there were plenty of mistakes on-screen including "Title" in the place of an actual title. There were also some weird spellings and confusing slides. During the videos, there would also be random pop-ups that were very poorly thought up.

The next problem is the discussion section. They are not for questions or discussion. I have no idea how to even check replies from other students.

Finally (even though there are more problems), the tests are terrible. The questions are incredibly confusing, ambiguous and the "correct" answer is arguably incorrect. The final test even had a question that required you to remember something that one of their videos missed.

Oh one more thing, many links they give are broken and the answers to tests are no longer accessible.

I do not recommend this course for anything more than basic information and entertaining interviews with experts.

I'm a science guy with no background about Linguistics and had expected this course to give me deeper understanding of human language from a point of view that is new to me, but what I found is Linguistic is nothing, no offense, as long as this course tells me. Most of the statements and the questions by the professor was not well-defined and opinionated. At lease I wanted many examples or facts in some organized way when we focus on a specific topic, but this course doesn't contain that feature. I think I am just not the target of this course, but I leave this review to save others like me.

This course seems to be poorly organized and poorly presented. When I read the text, the professor does not use complete sentences, asks intermediate questions before the relevant information is given and then assumes that the International Phonetic Alpabet is known to participants because no explanation of it is given. I studied Comparative Linguistics 30 years ago so the subject is not unknown to me but this presentation is horrible.

The one-star rating is because the required readings are veryinteresting.

I couldn't complete the course because not all of their required readings were available to the public. When I tried to contact a moderator for help, no one ever responded.

To difficult to enjoy, unfortunately.