Teaching

Teaching philosophy

Teaching and supervision are an essential part of my academic life. Through teaching and interacting with students, I broadened my perspectives on basic issues in linguistics, and deepened my understanding of theoretical approaches to those issues. My teaching philosophy consists of three principles:

  1. make clear statements about long-term goals and short-term goals that a student has to achieve;
  2. facilitate students’ interest through tangible but non-trivial puzzles;
  3. balance empirical and theoretical aspects in teaching specific linguistic analyses.

I particularly enjoy teaching introductory linguistics courses at the undergraduate level, as it is where I first encountered the excitement of linguistics as a student.

Current and upcoming courses (at Edinburgh)

  • Autumn 2021:
    • Course organizer, ‘Semantic Theory’ (upper-level undergraduate; MSc)
    • Contributor, ‘Pragmatics’ (upper-level undergraduate; MSc)

Past courses

  • At University of Edinburgh
    • Spring 2020: Semantics block (2 weeks) of ‘Linguistics and English Language 1B’ (1st-year undergraduate)
    • Spring 2020: ‘Current Issues in Semantics and Pragmatics’ (Upper-level undergraduate/MSc; co-taught with Rob Truswell)
    • Fall 2019: Course organiser, ‘Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics’ (MSc; Edinburgh)
    • Autumn 2021 - ‘Guided Research in Linguistics A: cross-linguistic variation and universal in semantics’ (upper-level undergraduate; MSc) - Semantics block (2 weeks) of ‘Linguistics and English Language 2A’ (2nd-year undergraduate) - Contributor, ‘Pragmatics’ (upper-level undergraduate; MSc)
    • Spring 2021: - Course organiser, ‘Linguistics and English Language 1B’ (1st-year undergraduate) - Contributor, ‘Syntax: Theory and Practice’ (upper-level undergraduate; MSc)
  • At Leiden University
    • Fall 2018: ‘Semantics: Current issues’ (MA; LUCL)
    • Fall 2018: ‘Japanese Linguistics seminar’ (BA3; Leiden)
    • Fall 2018: ‘Trends in Japanese Linguistics’ (MA; Leiden)
    • Spring 2017: ‘Semantics 2’ (BA; Leiden)
    • Spring 2017: ‘Graduation seminar’ (BA; Leiden)
    • Spring 2017: ‘Introduction to Japanese Linguistics’ (BA; Leiden)
    • Fall 2016: ‘Trends in Japanese Linguistics: Japanese and theories of semantics and pragmatics’ (MA; Leiden)

Supervision

  • I am currently co-supervising the following three PhD students at the University of Edinburgh:
    • Takanobu Nakamura (Topic: Semantics of distributivity in Japanese; co-supervised with Rob Truswell and Bryan Pickel)
    • Thomas Stephen (Topic: Compositional semantics of clausal complementation; co-supervised with Rob Truswell and Bryan Pickel)
    • Esther Lam (Topic: On classifiers in Nung (Tai); co-supervised with Nik Gisborne and Bert Remijsen)
  • I have (co-)supervised more than 20 Undergraduate and Master-level dissertations at Leiden and Edinburgh.