Teaching Philosophy
“Do you really grok it?” :: As a teacher, my goal is to foster the connections between students’ diverse knowledge and personal experiences to texts and materials discussed in class. My classroom is a collaborative environment where students learn to challenge the material and join multiple kinds of information together to form a unified whole. I emphasize looking beyond the facts and theories presented in the texts to help students see the ways of thinking that lead to the discovery of knowledge and to comprehend which necessary next questions would impel the advancement of knowledge.
When students are encouraged to challenge the material, I have found their focus becomes less about whether their questions are “right” or “wrong” and they grow more willing to participate actively in class. Challenging the text exposes the potential for connecting a student’s understanding to different aspects of her or his knowledge and for assessing what connections have already been made.
Students in the 21st century both require and deserve a style of teaching in which the immediacy of the text and classroom is but one juncture for learning. The persistent and intimate access to the diverse body of information, such as today’s students have, demands not simply an ability to memorize facts and texts, but the ability to critically collect, filter, and weave this information into conclusions and opinions that are as well-formed as they are well informed. This, above all else, guides my teaching; the achievements and tribulations I have experienced in my own classroom have helped me in crafting and continually revising this philosophy.
Courses at San Diego State University
Students currently enrolled in one of my courses should go to the course page on Blackboard for information.
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LING 101: Introduction to Language [Fall 2011]
LING 521: Phonology [Fall 2012]
LING 551: Sociolinguistics [Fall 2011] • [Fall 2012]
LING 640: Field Methods [Fall 2012]
The fieldwork methods class using San Diego as a living laboratory for an exploration of linguistic methods. The student work in LING 640 is attached to the "San Diego Speaks!" website. -
LING 242: Invented Languages
LING 345: Queer Linguistics
LING 502: Language, Mind, and Society [Spring 2012]
LING 651: Sociology of Language
Previous Courses I've Taught
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Invented Languages: Klingon & Beyond...
LIN 312, University of Texas at Austin, Fall 2005, Fall 2006
[webpage] (includes course objectives, syllabus, schedule, and links to most homeworks and course-packet readings). During UT's "Explore UT" Open House, I was asked to give a brief presentation describing the "Klingon..." course. The slides from that presentation can be found here: [Klingon 101 - Explore UT].
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Introduction to Language and Linguistics
LIN 306, University of Texas at Austin, Spring 2006, Fall 2007
Distinguished Student Work
Over the two semesters I taught the LIN 312: Klingon & Beyond... course, there were many excellent final projects. Some are listed here. When possible, links are provided to the final projects.
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Evan Wilson, Fall 2005
For his final project, Evan chose to translate T.S. Elliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" into SolReSol. It proved to be a daunting task and only a section of it could be completed. SolReSol can be represented notationally in many ways, two of which are color and music. Evan combined these two in the final project, producing a video of flashing light. Words that proved untranslateable are spoken against a white background. The final video can be found here: [SolReSol Quicktime mov] while the English transcript for the video is here: [SolReSol pdf].
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Creation of the Gi'th language
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[The Kryptonian Langauge] based on in-world sources from Smallville and Superboy.
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Translation of various comics into Esperanto
[Sin City cover] [Sin City sample page]
[Doom Patrol cover] [Doom Patrol sample page] -
Lojban orthography
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Creation of a language without vowels
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Klingon Recruitment video for UT (Klingon with English subtitles)
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Decipherment of the Atlantean language from Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Having no formal linguistic training beyond what this intro class had taught her, this was a quite remarkable feat.
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SolReSol translation program (based off Evan Wilson's project the previous year)
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Interpretive visual translation of [Ride of the Valkyries jpg] [explanation jpg], based the langauge-music interface of SolReSol