The purpose of this presentation is to share how I often use drawing in my classes to help me and my students to review their feelings toward the course topic. In the slides that follow, I share how my students in an advanced course on English grammar depicted their initial feelings through drawing and how I intend for them to use those drawings in future assignments.

1. Advanced College Students
Visualize Their Feelings
About Grammar
Angelo State University
English 4361: English Grammar
Dr. Laurence Musgrove
Department of English and Modern Languages
January 15, 2013
www.theillustratedprofessor.com
@lemusgro

2. Purpose
The purpose of this presentation is to share how
I often use drawing in my classes to help me and
my students to review their feelings toward the
course topic.
In the slides that follow, I share how my students
in an advanced course on English grammar
depicted their initial feelings through drawing
and how I intend for them to use those drawings
in future assignments.

3. On the first day of class in English Grammar, an
advanced course required of most English majors, I
gave my students a 30 item diagnostic test on basic
sentence elements and forms. The grade distribution
below indicates pre-course knowledge.

4. After students completed the test, I then asked them
to respond to the following prompt:
“How do you feel when you think about grammar?
Draw a picture in the box below that represents those
feelings.”
I scanned the 32 student drawings and share them
below.
(In the margins of some of the drawings, I’ve printed
the words used in the drawings for easier reading.)

5. Of these 32 drawings, only 4 appear to me to show
positive, confident, or hopeful feelings about
grammar. I’ve put these drawings first in those that
follow.
However, of these 4 drawings, 2 received grades of C
on the pre-test and 2 received grades of F.
This discrepancy between feelings and grades suggests
that the drawings represent positive, confident, or
hopeful feelings of success in the class rather than
current knowledge or past experience.

6. “Grammar
is
good!”

7. “Oh!”
“I see!”
“Interesting!”

8. “English
grammar?
Yes, please”

9. “Devilishly
happy
Powerful
intelligent
Proud
omg”

10. “Commas!”

12. “Grammar”
“yuck”

13. “Wrong!”
“How?”

14. “Grammar”
“me”

15. “Grammar”

16. “I was never
taught this
stuff. Do not
make me feel
bad because
of it!”
“Good thing
we had a
great high
school
professor to
“Grammar help us.”
C+”
“Helping
hand”

17. “A Place for
Everything”

18. “Indifferent
Boring
Necessary”

21. “Our teacher
gave up
teaching
sentence
diagramming
the 3rd week
of freshman
year”

22. “me”

23. “too hard”
“steps to
grammar”
“too easy”

25. “me”
“Grammar
Land”

26. “Split
personality”
“Whaat?
Can’t
remember.
Oh, no”

27. “independent
“, / ; / ()”
or
dependent”
“verb phrase
fragment
noun
adverb
“See Spot clause”
Run”
“I feel like I
should know
this”

28. “twitter
I have 8am
classes.
there dumb.
Nvr let ppl
look down
on U BC U r
yung.
It don’t
metter how
fast your
going long
as you don’t
stop
-Confushus”

29. “GOOGLE
GRAM
I still haven’t
figured out
what a
compound-
complex
sentence is.
I know this
looks wrong
but I don’t
know why?”

30. “Mom”
“me”
“The dog
“The dog jumped”
jumped”
“little sister”

33. “my mind
+
Grammar
chaos!”
“me”
“grammar/
having to
teach
grammar”

36. “Blink”
“Hey, you’re
an English
major. Is this
comma
right?”

38. After students take the midterm and the final exam in
the course, I will ask them to review their initial
drawings and draw another picture that represents
their feelings toward grammar at that time.