Learner Reviews & Feedback for Miracles of Human Language: An Introduction to Linguistics by Universiteit Leiden

A nice refresher for people who already have a linguistic background, and a nice introduction for beginners also. My problem was all the weird questions about the informants. Some of the questions are really hard to understand which makes them impossible to answer. I'm glad I took the course though!

I have zero background in linguistics, and I found this course interesting and educational. The quizzes however do have some issues such as a couple of wrong or unclear questions as well as arbitrary questions, so be aware that you may have to resort to trial and error in some cases.

Great introductory course. Helped me a lot to understand what linguists do even if I didn't quite get all the key ideas which weren't all explained in depth enough. The examples from languages are helpful but require quite a good ear so I guess it takes some gift for languages.

Introductory insight into Linguistics. The professor takes you very briefly about the variety of subdivisions in linguistics , which , each by itself being a big subdivision within linguistics. Enlightened with basics of all these different approaches of investigating languages

Muito bom o curso. Mas gostaria que fossem abordados mais curiosidades sobre os idiomas mais conhecidos. Não gostei muito da abordagem em idiomas nada conhecidos ou pouco usados, embora reconheça que a mesma tenha sido necessária para maiores explicações sobre o tema.

Extremely interesting, videos were entertaining and informative. My only criticism is that the quizzes and final exam seemed to be at a higher difficulty than the course material, and often they were poorly worded or the correct answers didn't seem to be right.

The videos are pretty good, the explanations are easy to understand and I enjoyed the extra material (reading resources). The only thing I would change about this course are the exams, they ask very specific questions and things that may not be that important.

Good and intense introduction, but difficult multiple choice questions as most answers are deeply rooted in the clips and not in a reading text.

love the free access to Ethnologue and introduction to other linguistic tools such as WALS.

Thanks to the team.

This was a very interesting course and introduced me to a lot of interesting concepts and expanded my understanding of the concept of linguistics. I felt some areas could have been explored a bit deeper but overall I enjoyed the course very much.

The course was very interesting and well laid out. The only problems I faced were technical issues during quizzes and forum posts, but the course content itself is excellent and a good starting point for exploring linguistics and human languages.

It is a nice course, very well organized for those you are eager to learn about the theoritical aspects of linguistics, such as semantics, morphology. Every video has several quizes, just like every module. I would surely recommend it to anyone.

Very interesting and useful course albeit not too deep. It would be great to deepen the covered topics (not to make the course longer!) by adding additional materials for reading and viewing and by making the quizes bigger. Thank you!

VERY good content and classes! Some questions in the quizzes are confusing, and there was the trouble with the required reading for Week 3. The first Honors assignment is confusing - specially its very last input question.

It's an excellent introduction to linguistics! This course gives learners a general picture of how the field of linguistics look like. Assignments and assessments are of moderate difficulty. Definitely worth taking it!

Sometimes it was hard to understand the concept the professor was trying to make, because some grammatical forms were wrong and therefore the whole concept misleading. Otherwise very interesting course and thank you!

The course is excellent and the videos are very entertaining and engaging. The only problem I had was that the test questions were sometimes confusing and several of their answers could be considered true.

This was an interesting but challenging course. What I would recommend as an improvements is that the quizzes included comments for wrong answers and suggestions what material to re-read or listen.

It is a great course. With truly interesting guests, well organized, with helpful complementary material (Ethnologue and papers). The only thing to fix are some quizzes (specially, the first one).

I am essentially learning languages for work or for fun but this course gave me an opportunity to consolidate some knowledge / understanding about languages and across many languages. Excellent!

Good introduction to linguistics led by a charming Professor with great enthusiasm for his subject. It was certainly enough to convince me that the study of linguistics is not for me

It's fantastic to have a brief look into the intriguing Linguistics. There's so much to learn. But some of the readings and test might be too difficult and improper for a beginner.

There's just one problem: the exams. The questions and logic behind the answers are not clear enough. It's an excellent course and certainly, it would be relevant to my career.

The course was a nice introduction to linguistics, many topics were covered, but not in a very detailed way. I was expecting more examples from different languages.

Interesting way of presenting the basics of linguistics. Helps a lot to organise crucial informatinon in one's memory. Lessons, however, are too similar.

Good introduction course for linguistics, although some quiz questions are asked ambiguously and no choises looks right, and no one knows the answer.