by Rick Scobey

Created on: August 23, 2008   Last Updated: August 06, 2010

It has been said that a picture tells a thousand words in our brain and the same thousand words form the same picture. If this is the case, "Johnny Student" should be able to read, listen, speak, and write whether he learns by sight words or any other strategy. But what if it isn't? What if a picture tells a thousand words, but only a few hundred words are processed? This could cause Johnny Student to most likely have a problem writing.

It is important to note that there are two modes of communication: the spoken word and the written word. However, both seem to be forms of the same component which is encoded meaning in which two senses are involved: the sense of hearing and vision. It appears to me that he main purpose served by words is to convey information orally or in writing.

If we look at a concrete item or an abstraction in the world around us, can we speak and write about them to another person or to an audience? If we watch a football game, can we speak and write about it? Of course, we can. However, how well we adhere to the rules of grammar is another thing.

Students process input such as principles, concepts, and laws of nature in the form of written or spoken words into information, and even by sight words. In my opinion, it really does not matter how the material is learned since the information learned does not become knowledge until it is comprehended. This means that the student should form a "still or action picture with meaning" in his imaging part of the brain. Now the concept of whole an its parts comes into the subject matter. The whole picture formed by the words, spoken or written, is composed of parts, details, color, size, etc linked by association and based on previous knowledge related to the topic (PKRT) the input is about.

The order of things goes like this: when an action or still picture in our environment is observed by the brain, it is turned into words (in some cases, more than a thousand); then it is processed by the brain into words by means of vision and the auditory modality. The words whether spoken or written, form a concept which is composed of units of thought. The concepts are turned into one whole picture by means of the electrical activity of the brain.

Previous knowledge related to the topic (PKRT) or just plain information recorded in our memory is recalled by the brain automatically. I have experimented doing this with the criminal justice students I teach in high school. I take note of all the observations I

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