The Power of Verbal Intelligence: 10 ways to tap into your verbal genius. Tony Buzan
5: Brain Word – Using Your Brain Power to Develop Your Word Power
How do the following vitally important aspects of your own brain and its functioning relate to the development of your Verbal Intelligence:
Your memory while it is taking in information?
Your memory after it has taken in information?
The right and left brain?
Study techniques?
Mind Maps?
The multi-ordinate meaning of words?
Read this chapter and find out!
Chapter 6: Body Talk – Body Language and How to Improve It
Your Verbal Intelligence has a giant servant – a ‘silent helper’ – who has phenomenal powers to increase the already phenomenal power of your words.
Your body!
In this chapter I will introduce you to the huge part your body can play in your Verbal Intelligence. You will discover how the way in which you think affects both your body and the way your language is used with your body.
I will also introduce you to that magical musical instrument – your voice – showing you how to ‘play’ it in ways that will increase your Verbal Intelligence as well as your confidence and popularity.
Chapter 7: Present Yourself – How to Become a Successful Speaker
One of the greatest fears we humans have is that of being seen as a boring conversationalist and a dull speaker. One of our greatest dreams is the opposite: to be a fascinating, witty and enthralling conversationalist, and a mesmerizing presenter.
Happily the fear is unfounded and the dream attainable. In this chapter I will show you how to speak and express yourself with confidence and in a manner that will make you more respected and popular.
Chapter 8: Read On! How to Improve Your Speed, Comprehension and Recall
One of the best indicators of a high Verbal IQ is the ability to read a wide range of materials at a faster speed than average and with greater comprehension.
There are simple ways of achieving these skill levels.
In this chapter I will introduce you to them, showing you how to get a quick grasp of the overall meaning of what you are reading, giving you easy-to-learn-techniques for accelerating your speed, and setting you on the path to lifelong learning and development of your Verbal Intelligence.
In this chapter you will also discover the secrets of the ‘Magic Eye’.
Chapter 9: Communication Power – Using Your Verbal Intelligence to Gain Control of Your Life
The ability to communicate clearly and powerfully with words is one of the greatest signs of Verbal Intelligence, and one of the greatest guarantees of lifelong success.
In Chapter 9 you will learn how to become a master of communication. You will learn how to link with and understand others, how to use a Mind Map® as a tool for communicating by telephone, letter, etc., and how to give directions that people both understand and are successful in using. You will also discover some of the secrets of animal communication.
In this chapter I will also introduce you to the Self-audit, in which you will learn how to be your own ‘Verbal Doctor’, guaranteeing you a long and glowingly healthy verbal life!
Chapter 10: Last Words – Using Your Verbal Intelligence to Increase Your Other Multiple Intelligences
By the time you reach this final chapter, you will already possess a Verbal Intelligence that is considerably more powerful than when you started the book, and will have the tools to ensure it continues to grow.
In ‘Last Words’ I will introduce you to ways in which the power of your newly empowered Verbal Intelligence can strengthen your overall intelligence.
As I will show, you actually have 10, multiple intelligences, of which Verbal Intelligence is just one. Each of these intelligences strengthens and supports the others, and this Multiplier Effect means that your overall effectiveness and intelligence, not to mention success, can multiply by hundreds of times!
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Features
To assist you in all this, each chapter contains a Verbal Workout, to exercise and strengthen your verbal muscles. These workouts will take the form of exercises and games designed to stretch and stimulate your Word Power. In each Workout there will be specific mental muscle-building verbal games:
Word Puzzles – half of these games consist of four scrambled words, which you have to unscramble into meaningful words. Selected letters from the answer-words, will, when they themselves are unscrambled, form another one- or two-word answer to a clue that you will have been given. The rest of the puzzles are of a type typically given in standard IQ tests. Give yourself a maximum of five minutes for each one. The answers are on here. If you score more than five out of ten, you will be doing well!
Verbal Intelligence Tips – after each of the Word Puzzles, I will give you an insight on how to help your brain solve these verbal games more easily and efficiently. These special insights will build up into a complete Verbal Intelligence Brain Kit, which will help you in future with any similar puzzles, as well as in the wider context of taking any thinking or IQ-type tests.
Word Power Boosters – at the end of each Verbal Workout, you will be introduced to 10 new words, which will add depth and richness to your existing vocabulary. By the time you have finished The Power of Verbal Intelligence you will have accumulated 100 such Power Words!
Although these games are fun and enjoyable entertainment, they are also extremely important tools in developing your Verbal Intelligence. It is ‘games’ like these that form a significant part of standard IQ tests. Improve your ability with these ‘practice’ games, and you will raise your IQ.
Throughout the book there are also apposite quotes, case studies to give you insights into how your brain works, and examples of the wonderful thought-enhancing tool I invented especially for the purpose of increasing my own memory and intelligence – the Mind Map®.
a brief history of IQ tests
As has already been mentioned, at the beginning of the 20th century, psychologists observed that there was a correlation between someone’s vocabulary size and strength and their success in life. This naturally gave rise to a desire to define a person’s mental strength, and so the first basic intelligence tests were devised.
These tests measured people’s powers of vocabulary, their ability to see relationships between words and between numbers, and logical abilities. Average scores were calculated for different age groups. If your score was average for your age, you scored 100; if your score was slightly below average, your score was determined to be between 90 and 100; and if slightly above average, between 100 and 110. Someone whose scores were measured between 120 and 130 was deemed to be of high intelligence, and a score of 140 or more conferred the status of genius.
These tests became properly known as Intelligence Quotient Tests, or IQ Tests. However, there were two problems with them. First, it was assumed that your IQ score could not and would not change. This, we now know, is completely untrue – you can significantly change and improve your standard IQ score.
The second problem lay in the assumption that what the tests were measuring was intelligence, and was all there was to intelligence.
Because of these beliefs, education systems around the world became predominantly verbal and mathematical, and being intelligent or smart meant, generally, ‘having a way with words’!