Historical 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.
No teaching recorded in Fall 2026.
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Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.
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