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Mind Maps - Commentary Lesson

Okay effortless English members welcome to the commentary.

I guess this is are our newest kind of lesson or audio. And commentary, I’m just going to talk freely about the topic. There’s no plan I have no script, so I’ll be talking quickly using normal, my normal native English rate of speech and I’ll be using my normal way of speaking.

So, let’s go. Mind maps, actually Peen one of our members I would say probably our most active and motivated and enthusiastic member at this point.

He has been suggesting topics and writing forums.. He’s really probably the most active person on the forums.. And he requested this topic. He sent me some links to mind map articles.

I found one of the links he sent was Wikipedia and it’s an interesting topic. In fact, I already knew about mind maps. I used mind maps myself.

Mind maps are great. If you still don’t quite understand what they look like, I suggest going to the, use the text guide, the learning guide and go to the bottom and you’ll see the ‘learn more’ section. And there’s a link and it says ‘mind map example’. If you go to that, you’ll get a picture of what a mind map can look like or the general appearance of it.

But anyway, mind maps are very useful. I use them for writing. I don’t know some of you may know, one of my three degrees, my undergraduate degree was in journalism. So I’m a writer and I still write freelance. I haven’t written much actually, the last year since I came to San-Francisco. But before San-Francisco, I was living in Thailand and I would write mostly travel articles and send them to different magazines.

Anyway, when I needed to make an article, I needed ideas for an article, I often would use a mind map. So I would put my central idea in the middle of the paper.

Let’s say I am in Thailand I want to write about Thai street food. That was one of my articles. So I write Thai street food. I put in the middle of a piece of paper and write in the center. And then, I just start brainstorming. I just start thinking of random ideas.

The first idea, the first word or phrase that came into my head, I would write it around. So I say Thai street food, I would think of Tom-Yum, Tom-Yum is a kind of Thai food. I would write Tom-Yum on the paper and draw a line connecting those two things, street food and Tom-Yum.

And then next to Tom-Yum I would write, 50 Baht, 50 Baht is about… I’m sorry… or 10 Baht, 10 Baht is about 50 Cents, so it’s very cheap. And then I would write ‘spicy’, and then I would write ‘next to my apartment’, because I’m thinking of a place next to my apartment where I would usually eat.

And I would just keep doing that, going crazy. Whatever popped into my head, I wrote it down and the next thing that popped into my head I wrote down and I would connected these with lines. If I got stuck, if ideas stopped coming, then I would just look at the paper, I’d pick one of the words on the paper and I’d concentrate on it, and I would see what associations, what connections, what thoughts I would have connected to that word.

Let’s say, I’m doing this and I stop, I can’t think of anything, you know, and I’m like, Oh! I look at the phrase ‘next to my apartment’, I imagine the place next to my apartment. And suddenly I think ‘noise’ because it was very noisy. And I write down noise then I think ‘pollution’! I write down pollution. And I think ‘plastic seats’ and I write down plastic seats and then I keep going again.

Well after doing this for about 5 or 10 minutes, I have a whole page full of words and phrases. Some are very directly related to my topic, Thai street food. Some are not, some are totally unrelated, they seem unrelated.

But the great thing about this is I would get a lot of interesting details for my article. And I would get some interesting ideas that… if I used a normal technique, a normal organization like an outline: point one, then ABC, point two ABC. That’s kind of a very linear structured, in my opinion a little bit boring way to organize a paper. It’s okay for school papers I guess but for something a little more creative it’s not so good.

So I would use a mind map instead, and it would be the first step of my writing. The second thing I would do, I’d look at my mind map, and I would look for interesting ideas and I would start circling them. For example, pollution was one of the ideas I used; because sitting on the street in Bangkok, eating, well there’s a lot of pollution.

So I wanted to write about that. I wanted to give that feeling, what is it like to be sitting in a street in Bangkok eating, or next to this street in Bangkok eating food. I wanted to capture some of the feeling, and that includes the pollution, includes the noise, includes the heat, all those details.

And making the mind map first helped me remember some of those details. So I would circle the interesting details. I would circle the interesting ideas. Then, I would organize those ideas. I would pick the best ones and I’d put them in groups.

Maybe I would use a color. So everything related to the details, like how it looked or felt or sounded. Maybe I might put that it red, circle those with red. And then when I’m talking about the actual food, what food was available, maybe I would circle all the food items in green that I thought about. And maybe when I’m thinking about cost, how much does it cost? And saving money, how cheap it is. Maybe I put that in blue.

So then after I’m finished I have maybe three or four different colors on the page and those are my general topics, that’s the general topics that I’m going to write about in my article. In fact, I would usually write one or two paragraphs for each color, for each group.

So, this helped me organize my paper. It helped my article. It helped me think of interesting ideas, it helped me think of interesting details that I wanted to talk about. It was a really great technique for creative writing or for any kind of writing in fact.

I also use mind maps when I just need to think of ideas. Maybe I’m stuck, I’m thinking about ideas for effortless English for example. And I don’t know what to do next.

So I just will make a mind map in the center of the page I would put effortless English, I’d write that phrase. Then I just start going. And the first thing I think about, I write down. Maybe I’ll think of internet. And then I’ll write internet. And what’s the next thing I think about? Podcast! Then I write podcast, then I just keep going.

The point with the mind map is to do it quickly. Do not edit your thoughts, do not stop and think. You wanna keep the ideas coming quickly. You wanna write fast.

Later, you can go back, circle the most interesting ideas, or later you can organize them more. So, anyway that’s how I use mind maps. So I use mind maps really to generate ideas I’d say. That’s probably the way I use them most.

Now, some people… in the article talks about, you can use mind maps to take notes. You’re in the class, the professor, the teacher is lecturing, giving a talk and you wanna write down the main ideas.

So on the center you might write down the topic. Let’s say learning English; and then he talks about four main points: speaking, reading, writing etc. And then you write each of those in or around the center of learning English, which is kind of the central idea. And then you write more details coming off of those.

So, you can use it to take notes. I’ve never done that myself but it sounds interesting. I think it’s a good idea. You could use that for the mini-story. By the way, for any of our lessons, you can take notes if you’re not in a car, driving while you’re listening to these lessons, take some notes. And you can do it with a mind map. I think it would be a good way to do it.

For example, you’re listening to the mini-story lesson. Well, as you listen, you might just write down a keyword from each sentence. And you just write them and you just connect them to each other. And that might help you remember the whole story.

You don’t have time, I’m going too fast, you can’t write the whole story. But you could write down keywords just to remember the main ideas of the story. And that would help you at the end of the story.

I’d tell you please stop this, now try to tell the story yourself. Well, if you’ve got some notes, you’ve got a little mind map to remind you of the vocabulary, of the main ideas, that probably would help.

I don’t know. Try it, let me know. Write it in the forums, go to the forums.. Try it and tell us did it help? Or did it not?

Alright I guess that’s it for my commentary. In general, I think mind maps are a great tool. I especially think they’re a good creativity tool and I think they could also be good for note-taking as we just mentioned.

So, give it a try. Try using mind maps when you write, when you’re writing English, instead of doing this painful thing and thinking, thinking, thinking forever and making a boring normal outline. Try to make a mind map first instead. It might help you start writing more quickly and more easily.

And when you take notes, if you take notes when you listen to these lessons, use a mind map.

Alrighty, and finally use a mind map and write something in the forums.. Please use the forums! Alright, see you next time. Bye-bye