To determine whether students gain more knowledge and stronger impressions from reading a play or from viewing the play on videotape, two groups of college students were presented with an excerpt from Arthur Miller's "Incident at Vichy." One group was to read the excerpt and the other group was to view the same excerpt from a public television production. After the students had read or viewed the excerpt they answered questions designed to test their comprehension and also the emotional impact of the two kinds of presentations. The students were also given a preliminary set of questions intended to insure that the two groups did not vary significantly in their attitudes toward viewing and reading or toward the subject matter of the script. Both groups of students received instructions to pay attention to detail because they would be questioned afterwards. Results showed that students seemed to have stronger emotional reactions to visual presentations than to the printed word. The viewers of the videotape seemed to find the play more interesting and emotionally affecting, and a higher percentage of students actually changed opinions of the play as a result of viewing the excerpt. The findings suggest that regardless of how a teacher may respond to visual presentations, students generally find various machines to be entertaining enhancers of the written word. (HOD)