Professor van Oostendorp was a big plus and asset to this course. I would have really liked to have him as a professor at the Uni. I'm not giving 5 stars because I believe the estimated workload (in terms of time) for the mandatory reading material is at times vastly underestimated (like with the article on typology in module 1 and the audio lecture in module 6, for instance). Additionally, the way the forum is now, it is basically impossible to keep track of your own contributions and others' replies, which fatally undermines interaction between course participants.

I think this course was very interesting, and quite frankly it would deserve a 4.5 stars rating. My only (light) remark would be that I would have hoped more details on the research studies the teacher presents. It's only at the very end, in the society and linguistics part that we get to see some detailed results from an academic study. Also, I would have liked more on historical linguistics, but I know that was not part of the initial curriculum. Overall, kudos to Leiden University's linguistic team, this was a great course.

The course is a lightweight introduction to Linguistics. If you are absolutely new to linguistics, it will provide you with enough information for further research and self-development. There are some really interesting facts provided by the required reading of the course.

What I mostly liked about the course is the list of additional literature. What I mostly didn't like are quizzes - I little bit too reliant on the question formulation. The only quiz that I really liked was about syntactic analysis of informants' sentences.

I appreciate that the videos were intentionally taken at close range and they have transcriptions that I can read when I am losing my focus. I learned so much from this course and it has inspired me to further analyze and understand my own languages and my own culture. The quizzes are challenging but that is how to make tests! I am inspired to formulate quizzes about my mother tongue following Coursera's pattern. Thank you!

I really enjoyed the course and learnt a lot; I particular appreciated it as it helped me understand more of the issues I faced when learning languages. I particular enjoyed the prcatical aspect, not the theorectical so much: I was completely baffled by the section on "face" and would have appreciated a fuller explanation & more examples. The course videos were well made and engaging.

Thank you for a great course!

This course does a decent job of covering the main pillars of linguistics and puts the theories into practice by giving us a chance to apply our learnings of each module to real-life languages, and it even includes native speakers of those languages.If you're new to linguistics or want to brush up on your previous learnings, this course is definitely a great supplementary resource.

A great course, it contains very broad discussion of the problems of linguistics.

Quite demanding quizes force students to watch videos carefully and to read the required reading. This leads to better understanding of the matter.

The videos in the course are great too, the explanation of prof. Oostendorp is very lively and entertaining. The interviews with specialists are unique.

I think that the course was a great introduction to Linguistics, the world of languages. I very much enjoyed all the lectures and especially the interviews of the different Languages Specialists.

The Questions in the exams were not that easy. I would have liked to get real feedback and the correct answers to all the questions.

Thank you for the possibility to study online!

Excellent course, though I found it difficult. The exercises that required listening to students speaking different languages were particularly hard for me, probably because I speak only English and my ear is poor. Nevertheless, I persevered and feel I got a great deal from the course. I would like to take the next course in the sequence, if there were one.

really good and interesting, the quizzes (especailly the final one) were a bit irritating when you had to keep flicking back to previous videos on the same page (the language informants); I felt that the final quiz should have been exclusively what has been lerned rather than going back to langauge informant videos. But otherwise, a fantastic free resource.

An excellent course providing a strong basis in the technical areas of linguistics, particulary useful when you have prior nowledge in a cognitive science.

Nonetheless, some questions of the test tend to be a bit confusing and would benefit from a little revision - but the tests remain doable!

A very interesting course, completely worth your time.

This course provides a comprehensive and authoritative introduction to linguistics, including a wide range of topics, such as syntax, semantics, morphology, and psycholinguistics. The theories are explained in a very clear manner, and the different interviews enlighten the learner and inspire him to pursue linguistics with ever greater passion.

Firstly, I'd like to thank the professor for bringing us such a great class on linguistics! The course gives a general introduction on what linguistics is about in quite a balanced depth, not too deep to scare people away while not too shallow that you may feel boring. The missing star is due to some vague instructions of quizzes.

I learned very much in this course, and I am thankful for the opportunity to have taken it. I found some of the quiz questions to be unnecessarily difficult because of how specific they were to the videos of the language informants, but overall, I enjoyed the course and the wide range of supplemental materials that are offered.

Great course. Even though it says An Introduction... I found it demanding.

By the way, when I started the course it was possible to see the number of hours a week needed to complete the course (3 - 4 hours) on the course description. However, now it's not possible and I need this important information a.s.a.p.

Thank you!

Overall, I enjoyed taking this course. It was challenging, but it helped me to develop my skills in reading journal articles and assessing university level material. It had interesting case studies and gave me a good grounding in the field of linguistics. Thanks University of Leiden and Dr. Marc van Oostendorp!

There was a lot of interesting information in this course, and I liked the interviews and guest speakers of other languages. If I could change anything, it would be the wording on some of the quiz questions, and the difficulty of a beginner course asking for some of the analysis with the guest speakers.

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.