In my narrative, “Visualization, Imagination, and Immersive Experience”, I come to the conclusion that my language learning experience and my personality have led me to read and write with visualization and imagination. They bring me immersive reading and writing experiences from which I derive a lot of enjoyment.
Reading and writing are so common in the daily life that I was not aware of the typical way I read and write until I reflected upon my past experiences. Therefore, the pre-writing before I read and thought about the prompt was a crucial step. It helped me identify patterns, develop my thesis, and support my arguments with my own experiences. The way I write also manifested itself during the process – “I would first think of a scene as detailed as possible and turned it into words.” In pre-writing, I elaborated on three scenes that went as specific as “Through the leaves and branches, the late summer sunlight came from the windows on my left, leaving light spots on my favorite book, Stories of the Romans.” Visualization and imagination are pivotal elements of my reading and writing habits. Even now when I am writing this reflection post, I have the pictures of me in my head sitting in a booth and drafting my essay.
With the materials in hand, I started to work on the literacy narrative. I identified my language learning experience in my childhood and my introversion to be the most influential factors. The structure, however, was a little bit complex. Not only did I have two factors to discuss, but I also had two subjects – the way I read and the way I write – to analyze. Furthermore, the two factors seemed to shape my reading and writing habits in different periods of my life, of which I was not aware at the beginning. I felt weird reading my first draft and resorted to a writing tutor. The tutor also found the structure complicated and suggested drawing it out on paper. As I pointed out in my essay, visuals helped me think and communicate. I drew a graph that divided my essays into six parts, and we discussed and moved around those blocks to make the logic flow smoothly. And it worked pretty well.
Using Dan Roam’s terminology, I am a visual thinker, yet just a “Yellow Pen”. I employ visuals and imagination to process the information, like reading or writing, but I am far far away from an artist. As a result, I depend heavily on words even when I am making a graph or illustration. I really enjoy the class readings so far and look forward to the following assignments that require more visuals and creativity.