If new words are not quickly connected to existing webs of information, they will become lost. Our brains are designed to search for patterns and they continually seek similarities and differences between what is known and new information. If a word is encountered and can be associated with something already learned, the connection will be greatly strengthened.

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One way of emphasizing these connections is to build semantic maps. These thought organizers are designed to specifically target the relationships between words. As the connections grow, the familiarity with target terms proportionally increases.