Lab Activity 23: Concept Maps

Chapter 5: Outlines and Concept Maps
Lab Activity 23: Concept Maps

Objective
To map the major and minor details that support the main idea.

Step 2: Read the following two selections from a college criminology textbook. Then answer the questions that follow each of them.

7. The earliest known terrorist group was a Jewish nationalist/religious group called the Sicarii. They operated against occupying Roman forces around 70 a.d. using deadly savage methods against Romans and Jews alike. Another early group, the Ismailis or Assassins, responding to what they considered religious oppression, carried out a reign of intimidation throughout the Islamic world from about the eleventh to the mid-thirteenth centuries, and have been called the most effective terrorists in history. The term terrorism itself is believed to have originated with the French Revolutionary Jacobins who instituted France's domestic Reign of Terror. Thus, the phenomenon of terrorism is neither new nor alien to human nature.

—Adapted from Ellis and Walsh, Criminology, 2000, p. 502

The main idea of the selection is expressed in which sentence?

a. The earliest known terrorist group was a Jewish nationalist/religious group called the Sicarii.

b. They operated against occupying Roman forces around 70 A.D. using deadly savage methods against Romans and Jews alike.

c. The term terrorism itself is believed to have originated with the French Revolutionary Jacobins who instituted France's domestic Reign of Terror.

d. Thus, the phenomenon of terrorism is neither new nor alien to human nature.

8. A concept map presenting a timeline that would help you remember the details in the passage would best be constructed as which of the following?

a.

b.

c.

d.

9. Do you accept the cliché that one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter? Although many people do, this attitude has been called "sophomoric moral relativism." Although all terrorists probably claim to be freedom fighters, there are two important distinctions between terrorists and freedom fighters (or guerrillas) that go beyond semantics implying their moral equivalence. First, freedom fighters are fighters in wars of national liberation against foreign occupiers or against oppressive domestic regimes they seek to overthrow. Terrorists are typically fighting to gain some sort of ethnic autonomy or to right some perceived inequity and rarely have illusions of overthrowing the government they are fighting against. While guerrillas may occasionally use terrorist tactics against noncombatants, widespread use of such tactics will deprive them of the popular support they need, and thus they tend to confine their activities to fighting enemy combatants.
The second important distinction is that guerrilla activity is overwhelmingly confined to third-world dictatorships or one-party states, while terrorists overwhelmingly operate against liberal Western democracies, which are less well-equipped to deal with the problem because of legal and moral restraints than are ruthless dictatorships or one-party states.

—Ellis and Walsh, Criminology, 2000, p. 503

Which sentence best expresses the main idea of the selection?

a. Do you accept the cliché that one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter?

b. Although many people do, this attitude has been called "sophomoric moral relativism."

c. Although all terrorists probably claim to be freedom fighters, there are two important distinctions between terrorists and freedom fighters (or guerrillas) that go beyond semantics implying their moral equivalence.

d. First, freedom fighters are fighters in wars of national liberation against foreign occupiers or against oppressive domestic regimes they seek to overthrow.

10. Which concept map best represents the major supporting details for the main idea?

a.

b.

c.

d.