Breaking the Syntax Barrier
This is the companion site for Breaking the Syntax Barrier: Empowering Students to Code in Any Language, a breakout session presented with Marie Neubrander at the Electronic Conference on Teaching Statistics (eCOTS) 2026.
Students often treat an unfamiliar programming language as a barrier rather than a translation problem, and that anxiety follows them into the job market. The session argues for teaching functional equivalence across languages, for example that Python’s linear_model.LinearRegression() and R’s lm() are the same idea wearing different syntax, and for using AI as a translation aid in ways that build independence rather than dependence. The site collects:
- Interactive slides from the session.
- A demo lesson module illustrating the approach.
- The “Your Turn” prompt that framed the breakout room discussion.
- An appendix of further things to try, there to steer the group discussion or offer ideas to rooms that wanted them.