POSTER C6

Ten Trees a Day: How Gwilym the Trilingual Buffalo and Insights from Learning Science Can Improve Syntax Skills

Lynn Santelmann, Portland State University
santelmannl@pdx.edu

Syntax students need practice drawing trees. Here, I describe a formative exercise where students draw and correct 10 trees after each class. This exercise uses distributed, interleaved practice to build skills that help students engage in lecture and active learning during class. This practice can be adapted for other courses.

Watch this 1-minute video

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Accessible PDF of the slides handout can be found below the embedded YouTube video for download

Additional Materials

Download the 10 Trees a Day Buffalo Story here. Please make sure to follow the author’s Creative Commons license when using this material.

This presentation is part of the organized session on Scholarly Teaching in Linguistics in the Age of Covid-19 and Beyond at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. For correspondence regarding this particular presentation, please contact the author(s) at the email address listed above.

Check out our other POSTER panel presentations:

POSTER Session A: Course Design [11:00am]

1. Using a Class Wiki to Facilitate Community and Linguistic Inclusivity (Bjorndahl)
2. Offline vs. Online Modalities in Extracurricular Programming (Lucovich)
3. Diversifying the Field: Activities to make linguistics more relevant (Mantenuto)
4. ADA Compliance and Teaching Linguistics Online: Best practices and resources (Miller)
5. Contract grading in Introductory Linguistics: Creating motivated self-learners (Paraskevas)
6. Course Design Principles for a More Diverse Professoriate (Truong)
7. Rethinking Extra Credit: How gamification can reduce grade inflation and strengthen soft skills (Welch)

POSTER Session B: Learning Activities [11:30am]

1. Podcasting in a Pandemic for Teaching, Outreach, and Justice (Anderson, Bjorkman, Desmeules-Trudel, Doner, Currie Hall, Mills, Sanders, Taniguchi)
2. Interactive Activities for Asynchronous Introduction to Linguistics (Curtis)
3. Team Based Learning and English Grammar: Building community and lowering affect (Launspach)
4. Replacing Traditional Sections With Teams-based Groupwork: Remote learning and beyond (Lee)
5. Journaling About Progress and Errors (Nordquist)
6. Making Online Group Work Appealing Through Wikipedia Editing (Stvan)
7. The impact of Metacognition in Linguistics Courses (Vallejos & Rodríguez-González)

POSTER Session C: Teaching a Specific Topic in Linguistics [12:00pm]

1. From “Hello World!” to Fourier Transforms: Teaching linguistics undergraduates to code in ten weeks or less (Blaylock)
2. Active Learning and Self-regulation in Introductory Syntax (Bunger)
3. All in With Google Slides: Virtual engagement and formative assessment in introductory sign language linguistics (Geer)
4. Fostering Learner Investment Through Objectives-based Evaluation and Structured Independent Research Projects (Nee & Remirez)
5. Teaching Grammaticality with Online Tools (Rapp Young)
6. Ten Trees a Day: How Gwilym the Trilingual Buffalo and Insights from Learning Science Can Improve Syntax Skills (Santelmann)
7. Teaching Teachers Phonetics: The design and implementation of an asynchronous online English phonetics course (Weinberger, Almalki & Olesova)