Learners in general struggle when working with word problems. South African learners in particular have an added barrier owing to the many official languages that have been legislated. The South African Department of Basic Education, through its curriculum statements, envisages that problem solving will play a fundamental part in mathematics teaching and learning. Whilst this has been embraced by teachers of mathematics, learners still experience difficulties when solving chosen word problems. This empirical, qualitative study explored 28 Grade 9 learners' use of visualisation when solving word problems. After all the due ethical clearance protocols were observed, one class of learners completed a task-based exercise and five learners were interviewed. The results showed that when learners drew a diagram that represented the problem, they were more likely to solve it. Those learners who drew no diagram, or drew an incorrect one, failed to arrive at a suitable solution. An important finding is that the visualisation technique is a powerful tool when working with the solving of problems in mathematics.