Speak Out OCTOBER 2021 DIGITAL EDITION

“What I heard I forgot, what I see, I remember, what I do, I understand.” Xunzi (340 - 245 BC) important to help increase her comprehension of the biomechanics of swallowing. By creating the images, she was not only providing herself with a visual representation of a particular structure or process, but this was also reinforced by drawing it herself and not just looking at an image in a particular text. This offered her a greater awareness of what moves, how it gets there, and potentially a sequence of biomechanical events. Her lecturer, Roger Newman, also reinforced the importance of ensuring that a client appreciates what is happening, something which needs to be done at a simple enough level for them to understand. Through his extensive clinical experience, he found that in many cases this only be done by drawing a basic image or diagram to explain a particular concept. Having this knowledge in the form of an appropriate drawing or image enables clinicians to provide a visual representation for a patient to help explain a particular disorder, enabling a greater understanding of what is happening. Tracy has always used a visual learning style and she has now adopted this in her undergraduate study and will continue to use it once she has qualified. While her drawings may not be 100% anatomically measurable, they are created in a way that she can understand, including annotations, plus they’re visually appealing, colourful, and fun. She found that as she progressed, her images were improving in accuracy, and she continues to learn from transferring her thoughts into creative images. As she was drawing many individual images, it was suggested that she create her own logo as a copyright. The ‘Sparkly Speech(i.e.) Student’ was born, and her logo is placed on all her images. Each image shows the information that she has obtained from a particular lecture, or indeed one that she has transferred from previous subjects to boost her current learning ability. Tracy reported that, “As a student with dyslexia and ADHD, the main challenges I face while studying is understanding the written word and making notes from the lectures, and I often find that I can be somewhat inattentive at times. As a result, studying for my degree can be very hard at times as I am unsure if I am doing a good job or even keeping up. However, I consider myself lucky in that I am not only focused on subjects concerning speech pathology, but also with art. This means that whenever I must make sense of something important, for example the head and

Fig 2

Fig 3

49

October 2021 | Speak Out