A study was conducted to determine if visualization could be used as an organizational tool to help adult education students improve their reading comprehension by helping them to see the structure of what they are reading in a sort of verbal picture of organized ideas. Following a review of research, which identified five areas in which visualization has been shown to be helpful, lessons were developed and used with adult education students at the Adult Day and Evening School in Oakland, California. The lessons, which were aimed to teach visualization as an organizational strategy, were divided into two parts (main idea and comparison/contrast). The materials were arranged to provide sequential instruction moving from concrete, to pictorial, to symbolic experience, first with words and then with paragraphs. It was found that the 11 students who received training in using visualization scored better on a test of main idea and comparison/contrast than the eight students who did not receive the training; and that there was a correlation between amount of visually enriched training a student received and test results. Implications for teaching include the following: (1) teaching the concepts of main idea and comparison/contrast in a sequentially developed, horizontal set of lessons seems to be effective in helping students develop skill; and (2) students seem to respond to concrete and pictorial experiences as a basis for forming visual images and organization which can help them move on to deal with symbolic experiences successfully. (KC)