Lu Yanda (Affiliated Hospital of Hainan Medical College, Hainan Haikou, 570102) Abstract Our era has entered the era of map reading. Visual literacy is the basic cultural literacy of people in the era of map reading, and due to the characteristics and requirements of medical profession itself, medical students must have good visual literacy. In this paper, the importance of visual literacy cultivation of medical students is explained from the concept of reading era, the root cause of the arrival of reading era, the advantages and disadvantages of the arrival of reading era, as well as the concept of visual literacy, the meaning of visual cultivation, and the strategy of visual cultivation. Lu Yanda, Department of Radiotherapy, Affiliated Hospital of Hainan Medical College Keywords: picture reading era; visual literacy; medical students; cultivation Film and television, advertisements, MTV, internet, cartoon cartoons, these dynamic and non-dynamic images overwhelmingly hit the modern eyes. As a new culture, “reading pictures” has penetrated every aspect of social life: illustrations and photos take up a larger and larger proportion in publications, advertisements and films are everywhere, and even the old format menus of restaurants with the names and prices of dishes are replaced by a new look with colorful pictures of dishes, while words seem to have relegated to a auxiliary presence. In recent years, there are also a large number of “graphic works” – graphic interpretation of the “Three Character Classic”, graphic interpretation of the “Capitalism”, etc.. Our time has entered the era of map reading. Modern culture is moving away from the language-centered rationalist form to the visual-centered, especially image-centered, sensualist form. The advent of the era of reading pictures not only marks the transformation and formation of a cultural form, but also marks the expansion and formation of a new communication concept. It also means a transformation of human thinking mode. The human thinking process is intertwined with the visual process and the comprehension process. Nowadays, visual thinking is becoming an important way for people to obtain information around them, and this visual thinking ability is gradually becoming a key skill, and the research and cultivation of visual literacy is also receiving more and more attention from many experts and scholars at home and abroad. First, the social roots of the arrival of the era of reading pictures The era of reading pictures is a concept made in China. In 1996, editor Zhong Jieling invited writers Yang Xiaoyan and Zhong Jianfu to write a preface in order to promote the Red Windmill Classic Comic Book Series, which was called “The era of reading pictures”. Since then, with the popular sales of Shandong Pictorial Press’ Old Photos, Black Lens, Red Lens, as well as Jiemi’s illustrated books and Zhu Deyong’s cartoons, “the era of reading pictures” has become a popular term, widely used by businessmen, the public and intellectuals at the same time [1]. This series of events demonstrates the approach, transfer and exploitation of the print culture, which has been growing for more than two decades, to a more powerful media culture. Technological developments have provided strong technical support for the advent of the age of map reading. With the development of science and technology, the media of visual symbol communication has undergone the process of transformation from print media to electronic media for centuries, and the printing method has been innovated from the initial dull and inefficient manual printing to the convenient and efficient electronic printing. In addition, the emergence of new media has also enriched the way visual symbols are recorded. Paper, cameras, video cameras, and computers have emerged one after another, allowing for a variety of visual symbols to be displayed, and even cell phones and the body have become stages for visual symbols to express themselves. The emergence of a series of electronic transmission media, such as cables and networks, has made the transmission of visual symbols faster, more convenient, and more widespread. The rapid development of technology has not only brought about changes in the way of recording and dissemination, but also in the way people create visual symbols. The development of technology has led to the popularization of personal computers and the popularity of creation software, and more and more people have become full-time graphic and animation designers, and the creation of images and animations has gradually become popular among the public and become a fashion. The emergence of consumer society is the social root of the era of reading pictures. The contemporary consumer society promotes the liberation of desires, a consumer outlook that constantly satisfies desires, a hedonistic ideology and an urban lifestyle. In contrast to the less intuitive text, which requires cultural support and rich associations, images in this era provide a lot of convenience for people’s desire to see and wish to see things. An important feature of consumer society is that information has become a consumer good, and elite and serious culture has been transformed into popular culture. Popular culture is a special product of urban industrial society or mass consumption society, a cultural product carried and delivered through mass media in mass consumption society, a synthetic and processed cultural product, whose distinctive feature is that it is made mainly for mass consumption. On the one hand, mass culture is conducive to the acceptance and understanding of mass cultural products, and on the other hand, it also creates the sensualization of the aesthetic interests of the public. This sensualization is manifested in people’s tendency to accept visual images, so reading pictures has become the main reading method of contemporary youth, and graphics and images have become the main content of contemporary youth reading. At the same time, popular culture is impacting the medium of text in the form of illustration, and the visual culture in such a consumer society presents superficiality and vulgarity catering to the taste of the public. The arrival of the information society is the internal cause of the emergence of the era of reading pictures. The so-called information society, that is, a society where the quality of society, social change and economic development are increasingly dependent on information and its exploitation. In this society, human activities are clearly influenced by the progress of information and knowledge, and information increasingly becomes the determining force and the dominant factor of social development. Visual symbols themselves as a kind of information or interpretation of textual information because of its intuitive, distinctive, vivid more by the audience cognitive and grasp, especially in news reporting, news photography with its unique way of reporting and strong visual effect, with its real touching image, let the reader directly feel the meaning of the news, deepen the understanding of the news facts, there is “a picture is worth a thousand words The effect of “a picture is worth a thousand words”, which cannot be replaced by any form of textual reporting. Moreover, it is not affected by nationality, region, ethnicity, language, customs and cultural differences, and there is no doubt that the scope of dissemination of this visual information is wider and more popular than text. The pros and cons of the arrival of the era of reading pictures. The way of image is the way of visual image, from the horizontal direction, the barrier of different national languages is broken; from the vertical direction, in the same country and society, the monopoly of words is broken, and the society enters into an unprecedented era of mass culture, the global integrated economy and the form of image culture communication without language and word divide, more closely and effectively link human beings into one. In our daily life, we often see many people who do not know foreign languages reading foreign language magazines, which was unimaginable before the advent of the era of map reading. In the era of map reading, various kinds of images have become popular, and they have the tendency to replace words because they break through the abstractness of words and the indirectness of understanding. This shift from text to picture book will certainly profoundly affect the way of thinking, making it change from a rational form centered on words to a perceptual form centered on images [2]. Therefore, the age of picture reading will make some people naive. Naivety refers to a lack of perception of life itself, a lack of foresight for the correctness of value judgment and a lack of rationality for social development. Many teenagers and adults on buses and subways are reading comic books and laughing and having a great time; but it may make people childish. Second, visual literacy and the significance of visual literacy development In 1966, John Debes was the first to use the concept of visual literacy (visual literacy). in March 1969, the first conference on visual literacy was held in the United States, which was organized by the University of Rochester, Sierra Club University, the Department of Audiovisual Instruction (now AECT), the National Council of Teachers of English Committee, and the International Association for Graphic Arts Education, to discuss and exchange theories and practices about visual The International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA) defines visual literacy as a set of visual abilities that allow a person to integrate observation with other sensory experiences by observing and simultaneously generating other senses. The development of these abilities is necessary for ordinary human learning. When developed, they enable visually literate people to distinguish and interpret visual actions, visual objects, and natural or artificial visual symbols; to use them creatively, so that we can communicate with others; and to use them with emotion, so that we can deeply understand and enjoy the wonders of visual communication [3]. Everyone with normal visual abilities has a certain level of visual literacy. However, except for a few people who are engaged in vision-related studies or work, the development of visual literacy is set aside for more people who spend a lot of time and energy learning words, reading, writing, and learning and developing abstract thinking skills. As a result, most people’s visual literacy, however, stays at a lower level and is not nurtured and developed. Their knowledge about visual literacy is not systematic enough, lacks theoretical basis, and lacks the necessary visual comprehension and visual expression ability. In today’s era of map reading, with the continuous improvement of media technology, from text to image, from two-dimensional to three-dimensional space simulation, the communication of information has gotten rid of the era of using words alone. Information is no longer expressed in words alone, but hidden in visual symbols in different forms. Learners who lack visual literacy are bound to be unable to adapt to this era of map reading, to a lifelong learning society, and to the technological learning environment of the future [4]. Through visual education and training of visual ability, it can improve people’s knowledge and understanding of vision, make people have systematic visual theoretical knowledge and practical skills, consciously study and interpret visual objects, effectively use visual means, accurately recognize, grasp and interpret various visual objects, and be able to effectively transmit information. Third, visual literacy and medicine From the setting of the clinical medical profession, there is a large amount of visual learning content as well as visual thinking content. To master these knowledge, the level of visual literacy will directly affect the learning efficiency and effectiveness of medical students. Among the basic main subjects of clinical medicine specialty, “Systematic Anatomy”, “Histoplasmology” and “Pathology” are all in the category of morphology. Microscopy has a pivotal role in the development of medicine. The rapid development of general x-ray, CT, ultrasound, isotope, DSA, MRI and interventional radiology has formed a new imaging discipline, which has become an important pillar of clinical medicine. Medical students learn imaging is to understand the basic imaging principles, methods and image characteristics of various imaging techniques, master the observation, analysis and diagnosis of images and the value and limitations of different imaging techniques in the diagnosis of diseases, so that they can correctly choose, understand the diagnostic imaging reports and read the image photos. Through repeated reading of films, familiarity with the basic imaging presentation and description methods of various lesions, mastering image observation, learning image analysis and diagnosis and their values and limits in disease diagnosis become indispensable abilities for modern physicians [5]. IV. Visual literacy training for medical students In recent times, courses in visual arts literacy have been offered at different levels of undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Europe and the United States, and some schools have offered a specialization in visual culture. In China, visual literacy is only limited to theoretical aspects, and there are few relevant practical explorations and studies. Professor Zhang Shuyu of Nanjing Normal University has developed a new visual culture course with the support of information technology, national culture as resources, and the goal of cultivating visual literacy and cultural self-awareness, and developed the “Don’t Think You Can See” visual literacy training software series and the visual culture website (http. / / www. fromeyes. cn), which opens up a professional platform for theoretical research and practical exploration of visual literacy cultivation in China [6]. According to Dong Min [7], the content of a complete visual literacy education should include three aspects: visual learning, visual thinking, and visual communication, which are complementary to each other; visual thinking is the internalization of visual learning, and visual communication is the externalization of visual learning. For the development of medical students’ visual literacy, we must first consider the academic characteristics of medical students and the current state of their visual literacy. Investing in the recognition of graphic image features, guiding students to pay attention to the area of visual stimulus features, the recognition of feature information can effectively improve the visual interpretation of the ability of medical students, combined with the characteristics of medical drawing, the development of medical students’ visual expression ability. Medical students are not professional art creators and visual designers and do not need very specialized visual literacy skills. However, since they have not been systematically trained and exercised during their growth, it is important to strengthen the popularization and cultivation of the basic knowledge of visual art appreciation so that learners know how to look at a picture, how to see it, and from what angle, instead of just browsing as if walking around, so as to develop the ability and habit of looking for visual characteristics stimuli in observation and improve their observation ability and eyesight. This ability is necessary for a qualified doctor to be able to identify the cause of a condition from subtle observations, which is very important for the diagnosis of the disease [8]. Combined with the characteristics of the medical students’ profession, the exercise of visual thinking ability and visual communication ability is strengthened, focusing on the basic rules, principles and methods of medical drawing. Students’ visual communication skills are improved by actually drawing anatomical diagrams, microscopic diagrams, schematic diagrams, and test data diagrams. This stage of training is mainly carried out in conjunction with the process of learners’ professional learning, so as to combine visual literacy training with professional learning, thus achieving the purpose of visual literacy training. With the rapid development of modern technology, especially the rapid development of network and imaging technology, visual literacy will become one of the necessary literacies in the 21st century, and visual literacy becomes a skill that cannot be ignored in this century. However, the cultivation of visual literacy is a slow and gradual process, which requires in-depth theoretical research and more attention from the whole society. For medical students, good visual literacy is beneficial to medical professional studies as well as future clinical work and research work. Therefore, visual literacy training should become part of the basic skills training of medical school students in the era of map reading, and must be given due attention. References [1] Yang Songfang. Analysis of “the era of map reading” [J]. Journal of Shenyang Normal University (Social Science Edition), 2006,30(3):49-5. [2] Yang Donghai. The influence of image reading on students’ way of thinking and educational countermeasures in the era of reading pictures [J]. Reading and Writing (Journal of Education and Teaching), 2010,7(8): 88. [3] Cao Xiaodong. A preliminary study on the cultivation of medical students’ visual literacy[J]. Chinese Medical Education Technology, 2007,21(5):437-439. [4] Zhang Qianwei. Visual literacy education: a field that needs to be explored[J]. [5] Zhang Yilan. Imaging professional teaching should pay attention to the training of film reading ability [J]. Health Professions Education,2005,23(9): 65-66. [6] Nie Lisheng. The concept of visual literacy and its visual literacy education in the era of picture reading[J]. Journal of Taiyuan Normal College (Social Science Edition), 2009, 8(2):15-16. [7] Dong Min. The essential literacy in the era of map reading: visual literacy [J]. Software Guide (Educational Technology) ,2009,11:80-81. [8] Bristor,Valerie J.Drake,Suzanne V. Linking the Language Arts and Content Areas through Visual Technology [J].T.H.E. Journa, 1994, 22(2):74-77. Author: Lu Yanda, male, born in August 1969, Xiushui, Jiangxi, MD, Chief Physician, now working in the Affiliated Hospital of Hainan Medical College, mainly engaged in oncology teaching and clinical medical work. E-mail: [email protected] Address: No. 31, Longhua Road, Haikou, Hainan Province, China Postcode: 570102