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© 2006 UC Santa Cruz
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Sandy Chung – Teaching Statement 2002-03 actively and rigorously, and to make the process of discovery exciting (intense) enough that its impact persists beyond the classroom. This view is shaped by the hands-on, interactive, Socratic approach used by me and others in the Linguistics Department to teach syntactic theory. The introductory syntax course that I teach (Linguistics 52) is designed to take students from ground zero in their knowledge of English sentence structure to a sophisticated grasp of syntactic analysis and syntactic theory. Through class discussion and problem sets, on which they are encouraged to work collaboratively, students discover first how basic sentences are built up from words, then how to form hypotheses about how more complex sentence types are constructed. Through debate with one another, they discover how to use evidence to decide which of their competing hypotheses is superior. Finally, they participate in building a formal rule system that incorporates the generalizations they have uncovered. The instructor’s tasks in this process of discovery are two: first, to put certain key theoretical assumptions in place, and second, to nurture the discussion so that the rest of the course content—specific analyses, the understanding of what counts as evidence, the formal rule system—emerges organically but efficiently. This second task is immensely exciting for me. Every class period has an analytic goal which is achievable in numerous ways but must be achieved, one way or another. Directing the flow of the conversation toward that goal requires energy, concentrated attention, and a high level of responsiveness to the students and respect for their ideas. When this instructional improvisation works and the class reaches the desired goal by some new and surprising route, I feel enormous satisfaction. The Socratic approach works well in syntax courses for a couple of reasons. Syntactic analysis is rigorous and highly structured, so that even though there might be many routes to the overall analytic goal, at every key point along the route, there are only a very few alternatives among which to choose. The enrollment in syntax courses is small enough for all students to participate actively in discussion and to interact with the instructor. (Socrates did not teach large lecture courses.) As my teaching has diversified, it has been challenging for me to try to import the hands-on, interactive approach into courses which fit less obviously into a Socratic framework. For instance, Poetry and Language (Linguistics 108), is an interdisciplinary course in which I introduce students to rhyme, meter, and how these linguistic devices are employed in poetic form. Rhyme and meter have a formal linguistic analysis that is quite rigorous. So orchestrating the discussion to get students to discover the details of, say, Shakespeare’s use of iambic pentameter is relatively straightforward. But it is much harder to make precise how rhyme and meter contribute to the larger aesthetic impact of poetry, even in poems in which linguistic form and literary effect are, intuitively, quite closely connected. There are only a handful of poems for which I feel I have managed to elicit this connection successfully in the classroom. Introduction to Logic (Philosophy 9), a large lower-division course which I have just started teaching, introduces students to sentential logic and predicate logic via the traditional lecture format. Here, the major barrier to a Socratic approach is the number of students enrolled: between 135 and 150. In a class of this size it is impossible to get most students to participate actively in discussion. Nonetheless, some of the benefits of the interactive approach can be achieved by posing frequent questions—some pointed, some open-ended—and interacting with the small number of students who do respond as if they were both representative of the entire group and members of a much smaller class. To an extent that surprised me, it is possible to connect personally with these students, nurture their sense of discovery, and track their progress. Doing so seems to encourage all students, even those who are completely silent, to feel that they, in some sense, have a stake in the interaction. There is an excitement to Socratic teaching like no other kind of teaching I know. The thrill of discovery has a real impact on the student, and the thrill of novelty—surprise—is ever-present for the instructor, no matter how often s/he has taught the material before. For many years I have thoroughly enjoyed this excitement in syntax courses. I am now deeply committed to bringing it to a wider audience.
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