[_Mike]

I took this course in Fall 2010 with Dr. Kucerova. The course consisted of 1 1-hr lecture and 1 2-hr. lecture each week.

This was the mark breakdown:
5% - iClicker
Basically, if you answered 75% of the in-class iClicker questions, you got the full 5%, and if not, you got 0%. Considering you still receive full marks for incorrect responses, this is strictly just a participation/attendance mark. I enjoyed this component because not only are they easy marks, but the questions help you to stay engaged with the material.

25% - Midterm
This midterm took place fairly early on in the semester and there wasn't an overwhelming amount of material that was tested. I found it to be extremely fair, and the class average was ~ 85%, if I'm not mistaken. It wasn't tricky -- if you paid attention in class and understood the material, it wasn't at all hard to do well.

30% - Assignments
We had 4 problem sets and 2 untimed quizzes to complete throughout the semester. The first couple were very easy, and they got progressively harder. The problem sets were typically drawn out of the textbook, and at times, required knowledge beyond what we had been taught in class. Overall, the assignments were somewhat tricky, but they were doable. The average for the assignments was ~ 70%.

40% - Cumulative Exam (2-hr.)
The exam was again, IMO, quite fair. There was one question that threw me off and it made me panic slightly during the exam, but fortunately, I managed to do very well. The average was in the low-60s, and I believe this is because we only really started drawing complex trees at the very end of the class, and if you aren't very skilled, you can get easily tripped up. For example, you may forget to attach adjuncts at the bar level, mess up WH-movement, misrepresent constituency, and/or forget that a verb may take two theta roles. I believe the questions dealt with phrase dependency, constituency tests, creating a lexicon that generate some sentences and block others, features and lexical entries, theta roles, and a few trees.


Overall, I really enjoyed this course. Syntax is my favourite "branch" of linguistics, and I took this course as an elective. I enjoyed the structure of the course -- you truly start from the bottom up, learning principles, and revising rules as you go. I found that people may have struggled in 1AA3 because they didn't see how everything "fit" together or why certain rules existed, but in this course, you expand upon what you learned in 1AA3, and everything makes much more sense.

I've had Dr. Kucerova twice now; I really like her teaching style and I found her to be very helpful whenever I had difficulties. I would definitely recommend this course to anyone who did decently well in 1AA3 and has a bit of an interest in the subject matter. If you have a bit of a knack for syntax and you pay attention in class and clarify your misunderstandings, a double-digit grade is extremely attainable, without an overwhelming amount of effort. However, that is not to say that it is a bird course, by any means -- you still need to put forth effort to do well!

This course has different course code now: 2SY3 and I took this in Fall 2011 with Dr. Kucerova

I like this course it's very interesting and it really goes beyond on what we learned in 1AA3. The trees here are easier to draw than trees drawn in 1AA3 (at least that's what I think)