Читать книгу How to Write Brilliant Psychology Essays - Paul Dickerson - Страница 74

Your ideas have a slightly odd status in academic writing. In a sense they are there, but not in a self-conscious way. Dropping in ‘I think’ – unless you are specifically required to do so, for example in some self-reflected component of an assessment – does not usually work well in academic essays.

Ace Your Assignment Brainstorming and mind mapping

In 1953, Alex Osborn developed the idea of brainstorming – an approach to problem solving which facilitates the raising of different ideas and perspectives, however strange or unusual they might first seem. This approach very much encourages thinking around an issue from different perspectives, developing novel ‘outside of the box’ ideas. In the 1960s Tony Buzan, who was frustrated with traditional note-taking, developed a visual way of connecting ideas which became known as mind-mapping (Buzan, 1993). In mind-mapping the core topic or focus is typically placed in the middle of a page with links branching from it to show connected ideas and thoughts. This method for generating ideas and for representing their relationship have been used in education for several decades now and could help you with your essays.

 You may find that brainstorming helps to support you in thinking about the ideas that you come across – perhaps especially with evaluating some of the literature that you draw on in your essay.

 You may find that mind mapping works well in planning your essays and in revision.

These tools can help with our academic work. Brainstorming can provide the permission and context for generative and creative ideas, whilst mind-mapping can enable a fun and visually appealing way of helping to plan our essays and check what we know about a topic for a forthcoming exam. But perhaps they are most effective if we are aware of potential limitations, or misuses. Blue-sky thinking about our essay topic is great – but our essays have to address the precise essay topic and the core literature. Visually appealing representations of ideas are a brilliant idea, but do remember that language itself can often represent much more subtle nuances of how things inter-relate than lines alone can, however multi-coloured they may be.