Mind Maps - How to learn vocabulary quickly, easily, and permanently

Do you want to remember your new English vocabulary? Would you like to remember not only what words mean but how to use them and NEVER forget them? Well, here is the method used by some of the greatest minds in history, like Einstein and Galileo. Watch the class and become an English vocabulary champion!
http://www.engvid.com/mind-maps-how-to-learn-vocabulary/

TRANSCRIPT

Okay, so take the bus here, then, the train. Get a ticket -- hi. James, from EngVid. Ever tried finding a place or going to a new country, looking at the subway or transportation maps to get from one place to another? If you look at those things, they're called maps, right? It will tell you what the city looks like, where you can get a bus at what time. But basically, it tells you what something looks like, and it gives you a picture of it. And it may not be an exact picture, but it's generally a picture you can work with. One you can go, "Okay, I'm here, and I want to get here, and that's how I'll do it." Maps are very effective and very efficient, right? Now, "effective" means they get the job done, and "efficient", they do it in a quick way. Why am I talking about maps? In many of the videos I do, you'll see what I call mind maps. I may not have called them mind maps, but that's what they are. A "mind map" is a device or a tool that we use to help us understand something and memorize it. I primarily -- and "primarily" means "mostly" -- use it for vocabulary, but you could use it for grammar; you could use it for learning an entire topic in a foreign language, and in this case, it's English. What I want to do today is explain what it is. For those students who have a problem thinking it's different or confusing, I want to break it down or break it into smaller parts so you can see it, understand it, and then use it yourself in studying English. You like that? Let's go to the board.

I'm looking for Mr. E. And here he is. You are here. He's here on a map, but I don't know where, and I want to get to there. So I'm going to use this to help me figure out where he is. And we're going to use mind maps now to learn how to work with our English.

The first thing you have to understand about a mind map is -- think about getting engaged. [Sings] I know. That's the theme from Star Wars, the Death Star. That's how I look at marriage. Sorry, ladies. I'm just joking. But "engage" means to bring things together. When we use mind maps, we use them to take all these thoughts we have in our heads which can be very confusing, and we want to organize them and make it a nice way to follow like a highway, right? A road you drive through. We're going to organize so you know exactly where to drive and it's nice and smooth.

So the mind map helps you because it takes you -- it takes what's in your head, and it shows you, "This is what I know. This is what I understand. And I'm going to put it on a paper so I can put it out there and know what's inside my head." And once it's outside of my head, I can start moving it. Because sometimes, when information is in your head, it's confusing. It just moves all around. And we want to make it nice and straight and easy to look at. A mind map helps with that, with organization.

In a second I'm going to explain -- because this is a simple mind map -- but I'm actually using a mind map to explain my maps. Woo! Woo! Okay. So we want to -- it helps us think through, but it also helps us engage. Because it's my information, I'm putting it down, I'm engaged, which means I'm part of the process, like "engagement", "part of". And I'm working through it, okay? So you take it out of your head, put it down, and you're engaged. This also helps with memory. And you're going to see me keep mentioning memory again and again. Because part of what I promised is you will learn the language -- the new vocabulary when you use this -- you can learn language and remember it permanently. Well, this is the first part of helping with that memory -- getting it out of your head, on paper, helps you with repetition. Looking at what you know because if you know it, it's in your memory already.