Chapter 8: Using Learning Maps

Overview

One aspect of using learning maps is when you start with your own ideas and knowledge. Let s call it ˜note making . The other aspect is ˜note taking , i.e. when you are trying to organize your notes from texts , speeches, etc that someone else has prepared. When you use learning maps in connection with learning, making summaries, analyses or any other type of note-taking function, you will use skills you have learned already in this book although some parts of the method may be different.

Finding keywords, getting overview and wholeness, the way you make the learning map graphically, using both imagination and logic, are just as important when we turn to the note-taking aspect of learning maps.

When you read a text, whether it is a book or a short magazine article, this is a method you can use:

• First, flick through the whole text very quickly to get a idea of the contents. Use a highlighter while you are skimming through the text and mark words you think are important. It does not really matter if you are going to use them later or not.

• Prepare a learning map by drawing/writing the central point and a couple of the main branches. Write a few words/ subheadings , one on each line.

• Decide why you are reading that text. The purpose is important because it determines the number of words and which individual words you pick out of the text as keywords. Do you read it for pleasure , to learn to make a summary or a report for someone else, or what is the purpose?

• Read through the whole text and add keywords to your learning map. You will find the quick first glance has been quite significant. It is amazing how much you pick up and how quickly you can note it.

• Rewrite your learning map and decide what to keep and what to get rid of. Only use the words you need to remember the contents!

  Very often the structure of the text is not clear before you have made your first learning map. That is one of the reasons why I recommend you rewrite it. The other important reason is that every time you rewrite it you learn by repetition and you are able to exclude more and more words because you have learned what the text is about. The goal in any learning process is to get the information into your head and make it stay there!

On the following pages you will find two exercises where you can apply the method just described. The first text is about fasting and the second is about McDonald s.

Here is first a learning map to summarize what has just been said about using learning maps: