Final Exam

Practice – Draw an underscore (__) where necessary to signal connected speech.

During high school, I took_art courses every year, and my art teachers were very encouraging.

When I started college, I decided to major in art. During the first semester, we studied basic

drawing, using mostly blocks, cones, and spheres. This was easy for me, and my confidence grew.

In the second semester, we took our first design course. I came to class prepared with a new

pad of paper, erasers, and charcoal pencils. Our instructor walked into the room and gave us our

first assignment. He asked us to draw the inside of our mouth from the perspective of being inside

the mouth. We all looked at him, hoping for help or hints, but he said only that he would be back
in two hours, and then he left.

Some people (the true art majors) immediately began to draw. I tried to think how the inside of

my mouth would look if I were very tiny, sitting on my tongue. If my mouth were closed,

everything would be black. That was okay – I could draw blackness – but I was sure my instructor

wanted more than a black piece of paper. If my mouth were open a little, some light would come
in and I would be able to see something – but what? There were teeth, of course, and the tongue I

was sitting on, and there was a little thing that hangs down from the top of your mouth in the

back. For two hours I stared at my drawing pad. I think I may have made a line or two, but nothing

that could be called a drawing. I never became an artist, but I did later become a linguist, and one

of the first things I learn was how to make that drawing.