I am entirely new to the field of linguistics, and I found the course interesting. However, I felt some of the lectures spent too much time on basic concepts, and not enough time explaining the more difficult but equally interesting course material, especially in the readings. The quizzes and exams are much more difficult than the lectures suggest.

The course materials are incomplete or incorrect. In at least 3 of the weeks the course refers to information that is either not provided or is no longer available at the source. And there are at least 2 quiz questions that have incorrect answers. (And they acknowledge the questions are incorrect in the forums, but haven't bothered to fix them).

I would say that this course is also more difficult than it needs to be because some of the information required to properly understand the material and, thus, answer the quizzes is not covered in the course. Thus you basically have to troll wikipedia or google randomly to find this stuff out. It should just be provided as this is supposed to be a basic introductory course.

I also found all the peer interactions to be wanting. A lot of the learning is supposed to happen in the forums where you discuss things with your peers. Well almost no one replies to anyone else ... and when they do ... its generally not all that meaningful.

They obviously did a lot of work to get this course done and I appreciate that. But it should be a living thing. Mistakes should be corrected, a better way to have students interact with each other should be imagined.

I did get a good introduction to the concepts of linguistics even though the construction of the course is quite frustrating. So I gave it 3 stars.

I would not recommend this course to anyone interested in an introductory linguistics course. While I understood the content of the lectures, discussion videos, interviews, language informant videos, and required reading, the quizzes were far too difficult for a beginner course. I found myself wanting to drop the course, and the discussion forums show I am not alone in my frustrations throughout the six weeks.

As a preface, let me say the areas covered in the class are interesting; I wanted to love this class. However, this must be one of the most poorly planned and executed online courses I’ve come across. Numerous links to required readings, across several weeks of instruction, were completely broken and useless. Nonetheless, test questions continue to cover these readings — this despite the fact these issues were pointed out five years ago, four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, last year, AND even already this year. Unforgivable. Also, the lectures were fine, but often only vaguely addressed certain issues, or never fully answered even questions they themselves brought up. Quizzes invariably asked for specifics which were never addressed, or never adequately resolved. And the foreign language videos were fascinating, but again, the areas in which we were quizzed would have been far more appropriate after much more in-depth learning than just 30 minutes of video lectures. As an intro-level course, perhaps they just bit off more than they were willing to chew? That alone could be overlooked, but the obviously systemic failures to address problems make me unable to recommend this class to anyone until substantial revisions are undertaken.

Definitely not an introduction to linguistics. This course is exhausting and extremely frustrating. It seems that the expectations of the professors teaching the course are off the roof. You get three attempts, and no explanation when you choose a wrong answer, and on top of that if you manage to pass quizzes, you can't reflect in feedback what were the correct answers. It is a MOOC course, not a 12-credit course where you are testing someone with such high standards. Course coordinators should look into changing the assessment straetegy of this course. Not recommended for someone who is just starting to enter linguistics. Unfortunately, this course would discourage more than encourage someone in the field.

Ethnologue under the free access does not provide the info the course requires, nor do any of the required reading links work. So So disappointed. Also Ethnologue does NOT offer an option for the free two months as the course suggests. I am so disappointed in Leiden, I will never take another leiden course. Not the first time, is the last time...

Most items mentioned in the course are not accisible

I've found the course extremely interesting and well organized to be an introductory course. I had no special need for the course and, accordingly, no special expectations besides the joy of learning the basics of a subject that I've always liked, and of acquiring some basic skills on it.

Professor Marc van Oostendorp does a remarkable job on being didactic, clear, interesting and covering a nice selection of aspects of this wonderful field.

The course's dynamics is very nice: lectures, dialogues, assignments, interviews, informants' contributions, readings, forum, quiz... it's never boring, really nicely structured!

A point which in my opinion can be improved: the redaction of the questions in the quizzes are many times unclear, confusing and even misleading. After the fun of completing the week assignments with a lot of attention put into details, it's a pity when the quiz is not clear or frustrating.

Thank you, I enjoyed it a lot!

Was helpful course. I learned a lot of things from this course.

Great introductory course for anyone who doesn't know anything about linguistics but has an affinity for languages. Well presented, well structured, interesting throughout. I have two suggestions for the people running this course: 1) The explanation of Grice's Maxims in the context of linguistics was cursory at best. It was mentioned only in a short exchange, yet there were questions on it in the quizzes. 2) It would be nice if students could have access to the correct answers to the quizzes, obviously being impeded to resubmit them after having seen them.

The course was really fun throughout! Easy enough for beginners to linguistics, although the assessments weren't so easy, sometimes had to reattempt them a couple of times to pass them :/

The last assessment somehow had an glitch, it told me most of my answers were wrong on my first attempt but after several attempts trying all other options and still getting those questions wrong, I chose the same options as my first attempt and this time I got 100% lol. Anyways the final exam was somehow easier than the assessments.

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.

My intention in this course was to learn more about this topic. I achieved this goal. My only suggestion is to check all links to readings and external sites. in some cases these did not work.

Course content was great, however many of the links to readings and the free subscription to Ethnologue - which are needed to be able to work on the end of week quizzes, are now expired.

Material is excellent and very interesting. Test questions can be confusing and poorly phrased.

I don't regret taking this course. It was created by truly A-class linguistics experts. The course really gives you a very basic look at linguistics, showcasing its primary building blocks. I have learned a lot! Thank you everyone for your work! I do understand it's hard to squeeze all the linguistic essentials in the 6-week timespan, so the course creators relied on the students' autonomy greatly.

But sometimes, the amount of required reading was just overwhelming. Also, I had a feeling that the course content and the tests were created by separate people, as it took me great pains to connect the dots between the relevance of the test questions and the material learned. This course demands strong analytical skills, so if you're not used to reading and understanding the scientific content on-the-spot, prepare for multiple re-reading.

Some tests took me long enough to pass. I couldn't actually find a way to know the correct answers. Due to this, I have this dreadful feeling I could have done better. The forum is half-dead and keeps going at cost of those who keep enrolling.

All in all, if you need to learn the most general picture of linguistics, this is a nice course. It won't make you a professional though, but you will get a clearer view on why this science is not that easy! However, due to all tech and organization drawbacks, I don't feel like investing into the certificate. This course needs revitalizing!

This course is extremely complicated. Some questions are confusing. Most of us don’t

know Tarifit Berber, nor Abruzzese, nor Turkish, nor Mandarin Chinese. I’m referring

specifically to Quiz 3. Please change that Quiz to a fairer one. On the other hand, I learned a lot about the Miracle of Language and our Professor is more that excellent. I congratulate him.

Las exposiciones de los temas fueron estupendas en todo momento. Aprendí mucho; el único pero es la ambigüedad y dificultad del examen final; sobre todo, para quienes no tienen el inglés como lengua materna.

Most of the reading material and links are no longer available, neither the analysis refered to in the videos, also the website (ethnologue) from which you have to consult information for the test has changed yet the content in the course has not been updated (eg: speakers of Turkish are over a billion acording to ethnologue but in the test the "correct answer" is below this number)

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.

I made it though one module. It periodically asked questions that were misleading due to linguistic imprecision. That seems ridiculous for a class about linguistics. However, while concerning, I didn't care so much. Go ahead and tell me my answer is wrong. No big deal. But the final nail in the coffin was that the links to the *required* reading didn't bring up the articles in question. It brought up website homepages, and searching those sites for the articles in question yielded no results. If it's required but doesn't exist, I *cannot* take the course.

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.

Poor design, way too difficult for beginners who have no prior knowledge. The quizzes are poorly designed and not related to the course content at all. Frustrated!

It starts off as an ad for the university. I'd prefer to focus on the content, which should be all linguistics, not uni stats and whatnot.