Teaching Philosphy

Learning Philosophy (a.k.a. "Teaching Statement")

As a lifelong student myself and as a researcher in language sciences, an ultimate practical goal of learning is to be a skilled and knowledgeable professional in my field. I approach teaching with this same overarching goal in mind for my students, with the understanding that this encompasses building broadly applicable skills of critical thinking, scientific method, and creative, coherent expression through the support of problem-centered learning. In an introductory topics course like Language & Politics, I introduce students to such theoretical perspectives as Dell Hymes’ framework for the study of a speech situation and Grice’s maxims of communication and then have students apply these to real-world examples of political discourse.

Getting on the same track with students regarding this goal depends in part on the nature of the course. For example, in order to achieve this goal of professionalism and development of critical thought, it is necessary to capture and maintain the students’ interest. In my experience, learning is most successful when it is a process of reinventing the wheel and then using the momentum to catch up with the lead cart. Linguistics is a fascinating field full of puzzles to be solved. Rather than lecturing on the canons from the beginning, if we first engage our minds on a particular problem, we build and apply our own critical thinking skills so that we are eager to enter into dialogue with previous and contemporary works.

Open communication is another key to maintaining students’ interest. Foremost on many students’ minds is the question of what is expected of them. This sometimes comes out crudely as ‘what do I need to do to get a passing grade?’ While my goal, ultimately, is to empower students to take charge of their own learning, it is important to understand the role of structure in this process and to respect this expectation of students. Clearly stating the objectives not only of the course but also for each lesson and assignment and providing ample opportunities to express what they do or don’t understand about these objectives encourages the students to then focus on the content of the course topics. An open line of communication also allows the students to indicate what aspects of the course they find most interesting. As part of the courses I teach, I always include a web forum in which students are encouraged to contribute weekly posts indicating areas of particular interest, areas of difficulty, or outside observations relevant to the current topic and readings. This not only gives me as an instructor useful feedback on the students’ interest and progress, but it also gives them an opportunity to engage in discussion with fellow students outside of class and to take a moment to clarify their own thoughts and questions.

Maintaining students’ enthusiasm and interest also requires engaging them in the classroom. I have found students to be particularly responsive to group activities. Again, however, the success of such activities hinges on stating clearly the objectives as a means of ensuring equitable participation and developing lasting teamwork skills. Expressing one’s own enthusiasm for the topic is also essential for sparking the same feeling in the students. Speaking from experience as someone whose nervousness when first teaching was interpreted as a lack of enthusiasm, I now strive to share with students how I use the linguistic principles they are learning in my own academic work and encourage students to recognize enjoyable applications of linguistics in their daily lives.

As professionals in any field, our research is generally an ongoing development. It is a reflection of earlier work we have carried out and feedback from colleagues. Likewise, students at any level learn more by revisiting and revising their work. As an instructor, I have always encouraged students to submit drafts of their work and have been available to provide feedback. I favor incorporating project proposals, collaborative work, presentations, and peer review as essential milestones in research and writing projects.

When teaching, I draw upon diverse instructional methods and activities, which serves both to maintain the enthusiasm of the students and to cater to a variety of learning styles. Whether it is an opportunity to shine where they excel or to improve where they need more experience, course activities should have a balance of quizzes, exercises, written projects, oral projects, group work, use of multimedia resources, role-playing activities, etc. A key to successful learning is triggering the student’s sense of ownership of his or her own learning. Especially at the introductory stages, you never know where a given student is going to become most engaged. Analyzing video-recorded political speeches has usually been appealing to most all students in my Language & Politics discussion sections, but I’m more likely to capture the interest of a budding linguist in some other venue, such as playing with computer-based syntax parsing programs in Introduction to the Study of (English) Language.

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