| Category | Difficulty |
|---|---|
| Homeworks | 1 |
| Problem Sets | 6-7 |
| Wiki Contribution | 2 |
| Exams | 6 |
Nature of Languages is a philosophy course that explores linguistics. The four main units of this course are phonetics (study of speech sounds), phonology (study of sound systems), morphology (study of parts of words), and syntax (study of word combinations). The topics aren't super challenging, but thinking about words/language in this new way can be a bit difficult. The workload isn't too bad (more on that below), but a decent amount of time and effort do need to be put in to get a good grade.
The lectures cover everything you need to know to do the homework and problem sets. Lecture slides are provided beforehand, and they almost always contain everything you need to know for studying. There are times where the lecture can become discussion based, but participation is not required.
It's definitely worth the 50 minutes to go to recitation. Recitation time is often used to go over the problem set, and based on your recitation TA, you might even get some answers.
Homeworks are super short and designed to take less than 10-20 minutes. They go over basic concepts covered in lecture. In general, homeworks aren't super complicated, but definitely can be harder if you didn't pay attention in lecture.
Problem sets are assigned/due every two weeks and can be super long. The first one especially takes a while to do (purposefully designed to be the longest and hardest set of the semester). Overall, problem sets are pretty straightforward, but can be tricky if you don't fully understand the concepts.
80-180 has started a "Wikipedia" page that they use to count towards participation. You're required to contribute a certain amount of articles, comments, and extensions to get full points in this category. These generally don't take too much time, but it does require some Googling to write a deep enough article.
Exams are pretty straightforward. There are 2 midterms and 1 final. In a virtual semester, exams covered more of "why" things are structured the way they are, rather than "how" things are structured. To study, basically go through all the lectures and make sure you understand every concept covered.