Advanced College Students Visualize Their Feelings

About Grammar

Angelo State UniversityEnglish 4361: English GrammarDr. Laurence MusgroveDepartment of English and Modern LanguagesJanuary 15, 2013

www.theillustratedprofessor.com@lemusgro

PurposeThe 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.

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.

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.)

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.

“Grammaris

good!”

“Oh!”“I see!”

“Interesting!”

“English grammar?

Yes, please”

“Devilishly happy

Powerful

intelligent

Proud

omg”

“Commas!”

“Grammar”

“yuck”

“Wrong!”

“How?”

“Grammar”

“me”

“Grammar”

“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

help us.”“GrammarC+”

“Helping hand”

“A Place for Everything”

“IndifferentBoring

Necessary”

“Our teacher gave up teaching sentence

diagramming the 3rd week of freshman

year”

“me”

“too easy”

“steps to grammar”

“too hard”

“GrammarLand”

“me”

“Whaat?Can’t

remember.Oh, no”

“Split personality”

“, / ; / ()” “independent or

dependent”

“verb phrasefragment

nounadverb clause”

“I feel like Ishould know

this”

“See Spot Run”

“twitterI have 8am classes.there dumb.Nvr let ppl look downon U BC U r yung.It don’t metter how fast your going longas you don’t stop-Confushus”

“GOOGLEGRAM

I still haven’t figured out

what a compound-

complex sentence is.

I know this looks wrong but I don’t

know why?”

“me”

“The dog jumped”

“Mom”

“little sister”

“The dog jumped”

“my mind+

Grammar chaos!”

“grammar/having to

teach grammar”

“me”

“Hey, you’re an English

major. Is this comma right?”

“Blink”

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.