Visualization as a guide for composing

Visualization techniques involving the analysis of pictorial information (e.g., photographs, paintings, and geometric forms) are used to guide students' understanding of the composing process. For the first exploratory study sets of papers written by students enrolled in an introductory level composition course incorporating these techniques were compared with sets of papers written by students in another section of the same course to determine the effectiveness of visualization for understanding the process of revision. Students in a second study completed a questionnaire designed to assess students' memory for visualization techniques as well as their tendency to apply these techniques to new situations. The results suggest that visualization techniques were effective in guiding the revision process (Study 1). Further, results show that students remembered both specific details about the pictorial information used to guide the composing process (outlining, analyzing, revising) and the underlying principles informing these techniques (Study 2). Visualization techniques are discussed in terms of their potential usefulness in reducing the cognitive demands implicit in the composing process.