Reading thousands and thousands of words in a textbook can honestly be boring and frustrating to read at one point. I have always found myself rereading passages because when I thought I had finally finished reading the page, I actually digested none of the information. James Paul Gee’s semiotic principle discusses that learning about and appreciating the interrelationships inside and across numerous sign systems (pictures, words, actions, symbols, artifacts, etc.) as a complex system is central to the learning process.
Looking at just this image you are able to envision it, understand where things are located, and know the differences between surface view and cross section. But could you have grasped the information swiftly through hundreds of descriptive words?
Take a piece of art for example. The description of an art piece wouldn’t have the same effect on you as seeing the art itself. So yes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
In academic discourse, although textbooks provide a lot of information sometimes it is easier through the use of images, diagrams, videos, or graphs. To this day I still find it a lot easier when there are images or symbols within a text or when a teacher pulls out a marker to show students what they mean on the board. The use of visuals keeps students engaged and easier to retain information. Throughout my junior year of high school I found the easiest class to be the one I thought I’d struggle in the most. Chemistry. But my teacher put in work to make sure her classes would have students engaged and I found that a lot of her methods were useful like drawing, playing videos, and group work. She was able to take a class that was difficult and turn the learning process easier and simpler which could be especially hard in an academic discourse.
Continuing my college journey I continue to explore for strategies that can make learning a little bit simpler for me. I look for worksheets I can use for practice, videos I can watch, or any techniques that might make learning simpler than merely reading endless amounts of text.
