  The dynamical structure of topologically massive gravity in the context of
the Faddeev-Jackiw symplectic approach is studied. It is shown that this method
allows to avoid some ambiguities arising in the study of the gauge structure
via the Dirac formalism. In particular, the complete set of constraints and the
gauge symmetry generators of the theory are obtained straightforwardly via the
zero-modes of the symplectic matrix. In order to obtain the generalized
Faddeev-Jackiw brackets and calculate the local physical degrees of freedom of
this model, an appropriate gauge-fixing procedure is introduced. Finally, the
similarities and advantages between Faddeev-Jackiw method and Dirac's formalism
are briefly discussed.
