Your experience ‘Some concepts are very difficult to understand…’‘Some ideas are too complex…’ ‘I find it difficult to make sense of what is presented…’ If you have also experienced the above when studying, try the following tutorials on idea elaboration stratiegies. They all help you better understand the text that you are studying. Organising ideas for better understanding Generating questions for better understanding Making concept maps for better understanding

What you’ll learn In this tutorial, you will learn that working on the information you have read will enhance understanding and you will learn organising ideas in hierachical or tabular formats is a way to do it. Remember: This strategy can also be used when you listen to enhance your understanding of spoken information.

Organizing ideas Understanding of the new ideas and concepts you have learnt is enhanced if you can identify the relationship between them. Organizing ideas in hierarchical or tabular formats is a good way for you to identify the relationship between the different pieces of information you have just read or listened.

Examples Organising ideas in hierachical format For example, after reading about animal classification, you may arrange animals in a hierarchy like this, according to its type: With the above diagram, you can now better understand the classification of animals.

Examples Organising ideas in tabular format Another example is that after reading an article about child psychology and the process of children’s mental development, you may come up with the following table. Age Characteristics of this age Implications for teachers 1-3 years 4-6 years 7-12 years Understanding of the information contained in the article will be enhanced if you can fill in the above boxes based on the ideas you have just read.

Activity Can you understand the organization structure of the company as illustrated in the speech below? Find a piece of paper and draw a diagram that shows its organization structure. When finished, click the button below to compare yours with our suggestion. Speech of a department head to introduce his department: I head the department. I represent the department in all our senior management discussions, as well as in policy- making meetings. Now, moving on to the second level, there are four managers who report to me. First, there is our Recruitment and Selection Manager. He handles employee benefits programmes. Then we have the Training and Development Manager, who’s in charge of skill training and management development. That post is currently vacant and we are, at the moment, advertising in the South China Morning Post, so we hope to find someone pretty soon. Finally, there is our Employee Relations Manager. She deals with the relationship between management and employees.

Activity Answer Do you agree that you understand the company’s organisation structure better now after you have drawn the diagram?

Now, also based on the same speech, can you draw a table that outlines the various job duties of each of the posts mentioned? The speech is repeated below: I head the department. I represent the department in all our senior management discussions, as well as in policy- making meetings. Now, moving on to the second level, there are four managers who report to me. First, there is our Recruitment and Selection Manager. He handles employee benefits programmes. Then we have the Training and Development Manager, who’s in charge of skill training and management development. That post is currently vacant and we are, at the moment, advertising in the South China Morning Post, so we hope to find someone pretty soon. Finally, there is our Employee Relations Manager. She deals with the relationship between management and employees.

Activity Answer

Summary In this tutorial, you have learnt and practised how organising information in hierachical and tabular formats can enhance understanding.Remember, also apply this skill when you are listening.