About Map Drawing Exercise by Mizuki

In my second Academic English class in April, we had to draw a world map in our class. When I told to do so, I was really confused and I did not think deeply and I just drew my own image of map. After all classmates finished drawing own map, we looked at friends’ maps. For second time, nobody had same map as previous one. By observing my friends’ maps, I found three things that are; the centered country was different, each maps showed different personalities and how it is important to learn from others.

Firstly, each map had different centered country. I was not surprised about everyone centered different country. Every time when I go to overseas, my mom and I find and look at map of visited country; therefore I knew each country has different views of map. Each classmate came from different countries; Japan, Korea, Philippines, Singapore, China and Hong-Kong, and everyone have different back ground. Some classmates may have used to map because may they are using map a lot in the class. Or some may have lived in States so they are used to it. For me it was easy to draw a map that is Japan is centered, because in my high school classroom, there was a world map and when I got bored, I usually watched it. Each map actually showed each person’s background so it was quite interesting for me.

Secondly, each map showed my classmates’ personalities. There were big map covers whole page of notebook, or small map, shapes were different such as square, round and three dimension. Also there was up-side-down map. There were either very good drawings and had countries borders too or geographically strange map. Many unique personalities were shown on each map, so it was fun to watch. Moreover, by drawing map with seeing anything, I could realize about myself. I did not know much about world. It is because I could draw Asian countries but not African countries, Europe and Middle East Asia parts.

Thirdly, everyone has ability to adopt or accept new things and tried it to make better. We made world map twice. When we finish drawing first map, we looked each other’s map and we studied what the differences and similarities are compared to own map. For second time we drew map and observed every ones’ map, nobody had same map that they drew in first time. We adopt new map to what we thought good. I remember I thought it is really important to understand each other’s because everyone has different ideas and each one is correct. We cannot ignore differences and should listen to or watch things more carefully and should learn from other viewpoints.

In conclusion, by doing map drawing exercise I learned that everyone has different background, such as what we are used to and which country they came from. I could learn my friends’ personality which are who wrote big map, I think they are dynamic, who wrote accurate map is may have personality and I could know about my lacking ability. Furthermore, looking and observing friends’ maps I noticed everyone has different image for the single word “map”. It was really interesting and I realized that is important to accept and adopt new ideas rather than deny and focus on just own thoughts.

Mizuki