Тони Бьюзен - Mind Map Handbook

Word Puzzle Number 16

Insert the word that means the same as the two words outside the brackets.

CARD GAME (__ __ __ __ __) ROD

Become a Word Hunter

Now that you have so much more knowledge about the power of words and your own Verbal Intelligence, refine your detective skills, and be on the active lookout for new words that can add power and vivacity to your growing vocabulary.

Wherever possible when you come across new words, highlight, underline, box and star them, to make them stand out in your mind’s eye. The simple act of deciding you are going to ‘up the ante’ will guarantee that you will track down more words, and will capture them better once you have them more powerfully focused in your sights.

Create a ‘New Words’ Diary

Now that you have progressed so far, it is time to gather up and organize the bounty of treasure you have been collecting. Create a special ‘New Words’ Diary designed for your maximum benefit. You may wish to keep your new words in the chronological order in which you discovered them; you may wish to keep them in classifications such as nouns, verbs, adjectives etc.; you may wish to keep them in the context of where they were found (long novels, poems, texts, etc.).

Whatever particular method you select, make sure that you ‘get your words in order’!

Build a Verbal Intelligence Knowledge File

This Knowledge File is where you collect your ‘word treasures’. It will act as your personal Verbal IQ Library, containing all the best word knowledge you have come in contact with in your life.

Sections of your Knowledge File can include:

Summaries of the best novels you have read

Favourite poems

Favourite quotations

Part or all of your ‘New Words’ Diary

Some of the Mind Maps you have made, which best demonstrate your Verbal Intelligence

Jokes which play on the meanings of words and which you think are especially funny

Use the Index

Whenever you are reading a book that contains an Index, make sure that one of the first things you do is to scan through it. This is a habit common to all people with high Verbal Intelligence.

Why? Because the Index can be a superb keyword summary of all the main concepts and ideas within the book. It acts like a magic key that unlocks the secret of the contents.

All the words from the Index, once registered in your brain, will act like hundreds of special hooks that will latch on to all the information within the book as you read it. They will make your reading easier, more meaningful, more memorable and faster.

Make Your Reading Environment a Playground For Words

Many people make their study look and feel much like a prison cell! They have a bare table, stark chair, blank, single-tone walls, no music, no art and often inadequate lighting and little fresh air. Why do they do this? Because in their minds the idea of ‘study’ has come to mean drudgery, boredom, examinations, stress, forgetting, detentions, punishment, failure, slavery and prison!

It need not, indeed it should not , be this way! Your study should be a playground for words. It should be somewhere your brain loves, and cannot wait to be in. As you already know, music and song stimulate Verbal Intelligence, so have music and song in your verbal playground. Your verbal playground should be inviting, comfortable, colourful, stimulating, brightly lit (ideally with daylight) and with freshly circulating air – and filled with dictionaries, Thesauruses, encyclopaedias, your special favourite and treasured books, and whatever electronic media you think will inspire you in the exploration and growth of your Verbal Intelligence.

Reward yourself. Entice yourself. Treat your Verbal Intelligence to all the things which inspire it and which it loves. Give that eternal verbal child in you the playground for which it has always longed.

Commit Yourself to Your Verbal Intelligence

Commit to lifelong learning and the development of your Verbal Intelligence. Every year commit to learn at least one new Root, one new Prefix and one new Suffix. Then commit to learn at least 10 words that contain these. This will give you at least 30 new words per year, and more: it will give you new ‘energy centres’, each one of which will itself be self-perpetuating, making more associations, connecting with your rapidly growing vocabulary, and helping you, naturally and easily, to latch on to even more new words and concepts.

This simple and easy programme will allow you, over your lifetime, to more than quadruple your vocabulary.

Play With Your ‘Magic Eye’

At least once a month, play with your Cyclopean perception. Invest in a book of Magic Eye images, and have fun going in and out of focus with the images. This will keep your ‘big vision’ well exercised, and will automatically enable you to see more in your normal reading, and so maintain your higher reading speeds and better comprehension.

The ideas in this chapter are summarized in Plate 15.

Word Power Booster Number 8

In this Word Booster we are going ‘back to your Roots’. Bring all your Verbal Intelligence detective skills to the fore – each of the words you are about to encounter you can dissect, analyse and put back together, confident that you have discovered its meaning. Again, choose the definition you think is closest to the correct meaning from the options given.

PHILANTHROPY (fill- án -thropee)

(a) Love of mankind

(b) Hatred of mankind

(c) Fear of mankind

(d) Wasting energy

MONOTHEISM (mono- thée -isum)

(a) Belief that religion is boring

(b) Belief in a specific religion

(c) Belief in a single supreme deity

(d) Meditation on the nature of God

MISANTHROPY (mis- ánth -ropee)

(a) Love of mankind

(b) Hatred of mankind

(c) Study of the female human

(d) Confusion about mankind

PHILOLOGY (fill- ól -ogee)

(a) The study of philosophy

(b) The love of philosophy

(c) The love of words and the study of language

(d) Aversion to knowledge

HOLANTHROPY (holl- án -thropee)

(a) The study of the whole human being

(b) Gaps in knowledge about mankind

(c) Studying the overview of human history

(d) Synonym for misanthropy

MONOGAMY (mon óg -amee)

(a) Monotonous speech

(b) Practice of being married to one person at a time

(c) Neat handwriting; fine script

(d) Depression about relationships

BICUSPID ( bí -cuspid)

(a) An animal descended from two evolutionary branches

(b) An animal with two large-pronged teeth

(c) A tooth with two prongs

(d) A form of bicycle

ANTHROPOLOGY (anthro- pól -ogee)

(a) The study of coals

(b) The study of human history and development

(c) Apologist for mankind

(d) Disdain for mankind

PHILLUMENIST (fill- lú -menist)

(a) A pyromaniac

(b) A lover of light

(c) A collector of matchboxes

(d) A lover of knowledge

POLYGLOT ( pólli -glot)

(a) One stuffs himself with food

(b) A chatterbox

(c) Lover of languages

(d) One who speaks many languages

2.9

Communication Power – Using Your Verbal Intelligence to Gain Control of Your Life

‘Words are the dress of thoughts.’

Chesterfield

‘Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind.’

Kipling

The bulk of this chapter will be given over to an extensive Verbal Workout, in which I will show you ways of making communication more memorable, and using all the knowledge you have gained so far to enhance your Verbal Intelligence in all forms of communication.