Visualizing and Verbalizing: For Language Comprehension and Thinking

by Nanci Bell

This manual provides the theory and specific steps to develop concept imagery, the ability to image a gestalt (whole) from language. It describes the important questioning techniques that stimulate mental imagery, so the teacher can learn to help students visualize language and verbalize what they have imaged. This imagery-language connection is essential for oral and written language comprehension, as well as critical thinking.

The V/V® Manual includes sample lessons, step summaries, illustrations, and useful tips for implementing V/V® instruction. This second edition is updated and revised, offering more than 100 pages of new material. Despite the wealth of new information, this edition is offered at the same great price the V/V® Manual has held for the last twenty years.

Presents the theory and science behind concept imagery

Includes lessons and summaries to assist instructors

Contains diagrams, artwork, lists, and other teaching materials

Develops and improves critical thinking skills

Improves oral and written language comprehension

Follows Sofie, a student, through the sequential steps

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

440 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[J. Boo]

Recommended by a random internet person for improving reading comprehension for (maybe special-needs?) students, with reference to helping them creating an internal representation of what's happening in the text as an aid to recall.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential read for anyone working with children. Even if you do not provide therapy, any educator should be familiar with this process and the importance of visualization to the academic success of a child. For people who work with kids who are not neurotypical, this is a great program to learn. While some people naturally visualize, others do not. Visualization is a tool that helps not only with reading and comprehension, but inferencing, sequencing, and daily life skills.

[Valerie Biggam · Rating 4 out of 5]

📚Effective procedure for helping students visualize then verbalize increasingly complex text thus helping them comprehend the content.
📚The question stems provided are helpful, particularly: “what do those words make you picture?” and “what are you picturing for that word?”
📚The examples of each step were really helpful to understand how a particular component (sentence by sentence vs multiple sentence, for example) would be structured differently.
📚 The summary sheets for each step in the appendix are brief and worth bookmarking.

➖One thing that needs improved for future editions is clarity about the pacing. The most helpful explanation about pacing was on page 348 out of 402! That information needed to be stated much earlier.
➖Future editions should also remove all the references to kids being “attractive”. Yuck. I know it wasn’t the author’s intent, but it is inappropriate and resonates differently in 2026. This is a professional book, not a novel. I don’t care if the kid taking part in an intervention is pretty, or if her hair is shiny.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been a difficult program to get a handle on, just because there are so many steps, but the book was very helpful in its examples and images in showing how to scaffold students into higher and higher levels of visualization. I've been able to watch others, who have attended trainings, teach using the program, which was very helpful for me. It is a fun process for students, and I have seen the growth in imagery and comprehension that it can give students. Definitely something I want to add to my classroom.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The graphics are a bit dated and the entire visualizing and verbalizing process itself moves a bit slow for me, but neither take away from Bell's detailed explanations and carefully-planned strategies and sequence for teaching students how to internalize what they are reading. Very helpful.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

so necessary for direct instruction for struggling readers

[Evelyn Repass · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read, imagine, see, process and remember. Skills for comprehension - the missing ingredient in so many reading programs. This method is specially useful for those teaching children with autism to get the whole picture and not just the parts they find so fascinating.

[Cheryl Neer · Rating 5 out of 5]

After borrowing this book to learn about implementing the visualizing strategy, I will purchase it to assist students in reading comprehension. Already it has been a resource to fluent "word caller" readers, giving them the structure words to help remember and visualize what they have read.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Using the program with my daughter. So far, so good...but there are several steps involved and I'm not even halfway through yet.

[Jacqueline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great program and resource for special educators and speech-language pathologists.