On arrival to the Asthma clinic and to the COPD clinic, patients will be given a short information leaflet which they will be invited to read whilst waiting to see the doctor. At the end of the routine consultation they will be asked if they would be willing to help with the study and will be given a patient information sheet and if the patient agrees he/she, will be asked to sign the consent form. The voluntary nature of this and the fact that non-participation will not in any way influence their routine care would be stressed repetitively, both verbally and of course in the patient information leaflet. If the patients were willing to spend a few minutes with the researcher, they would be introduced to the researcher by the consultant in clinic and the interview would either occur on that occasion or at a pre-arranged time to suit the patient. In the first part of the interview, the patient would be given the two pictorial questionnaires to complete which assess the translucency and guessability of the pictogram used for the investigators' pictorial action plans. The second part of the interview would involve explaining to the patient the concept of self management education and personal action plans and a pictorial action plan relevant to the patient would be shown to the patient and he/she would be asked to describe what action should be taken as a result of the pictorial sequences. A series of short questions about the self management plan and his/her preferences for either written or a pictorial plan would be asked. The patient would also be asked to undertake the REALM adult literacy test and demographic data regarding educational attainment, age and ethnicity would also be recorded.