Current instructor
Original student reviews · all captured dates
Graded on the same curve as grad students—they set it, you struggle to meet it. One of the most unorganized classes I have taken at UW, and he clearly has not changed it despite 20 years of consistent negative student feedback. Do not take this class with Yafei if you do not 100% have to.Rate My Professors ↗
Exactly like other ratings describe. Even grad students struggled with the baseline material. Some concepts are tough by themselves, but professor made EVERYTHING much more confusing. Might be time to retire ngl. Exam Qs worded poorly. Graded on a curve (usually boosts score though bc almost everyone does terribly). Good luck with this one.Rate My Professors ↗
This class was really difficult to follow. The lectures didn't have many helpful materials and no structure, and when students asked questions, he often didn't give clear answers. He also said certain topics wouldn't be on the exam, but they were, which made studying frustrating. Overall, not an easy class and hard to understand the material.Rate My Professors ↗
Yafei is very nice, knowledgeable, and always asks students if they understand the concepts. However, the lack of slides, frequent tangents, and lack of drawing trees made this one of the most stressful classes I have ever taken. I feel like I learned a lot, but wish the topics were covered with more clarity.Rate My Professors ↗
If you don't have to take this class for a Linguistics requirement, don't take it. If you have to take the class, wait for a different professor. He spent the entire semester teaching concepts then undoing what he had taught and re-teaching them in a more complex way--this made the course so unnecessarily confusing and nearly impossible to follow.Rate My Professors ↗
Entire course is graded on two assignments and two exams. Complete examples are rarely given in class and very few other resources are made available online to help with trees. Exam questions are confusingly worded and heavily weighted. He ended up having to adjust letter grade values to make a 65% a B. Would not have passed without this curve.Rate My Professors ↗
Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.
LINGUIS 373 is a topics course covering a specific subject within linguistics.
Offering recorded · Fall 2026
Recent recorded grades — Fall 2010: 4.00 GPA, 100.0% A/AB (n=8 letter grades); Fall 2018: 4.00 GPA, 100.0% A/AB (n=7 letter grades); Fall 2019: 4.00 GPA, 100.0% A/AB (n=8 letter grades).
historical GPA · grades
Fall 2022–Fall 2025 · limited sampleA mentored individual research tutorial for students pursuing Honors in the Linguistics major.
Offering recorded · Fall 2026
No recorded grade history
LINGUIS 681 is a mentored individual research course for Honors students completing a senior thesis.
Offering recorded · Fall 2026
A capstone course involving in-depth exploration of a linguistics topic and supervised research.
Offering recorded · Fall 2026
historical GPA · grades
Fall 2022–Spring 2026LINGUIS 699 offers advanced directed study projects arranged with a faculty member.
Offering recorded · Fall 2026
historical GPA · grades
Spring 2022–Fall 2023 · limited sampleLINGUIS 990 is a doctoral thesis research course.
Offering recorded · Fall 2026
No recorded grade history
LINGUIS 999 is an independent reading course involving mentored research for students with dissertator status.
Offering recorded · Fall 2026
historical GPA · grades
Spring 2022–Spring 2022 · limited sample| Term | Course | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Fall 2026 | LINGUIS 373 | Topics in Linguistics |
| Fall 2026 | LINGUIS 481 | Junior Honors Tutorial |
| Fall 2026 | LINGUIS 681 | Honors Seminar-senior Thesis |
| Fall 2026 | LINGUIS 690 | Capstone in Linguistics |
| Fall 2026 | LINGUIS 699 | Independent Reading |
| Fall 2026 | LINGUIS 990 | Thesis |
| Fall 2026 | LINGUIS 999 | Independent Reading |
Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.
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