Enhancing Students’ Descriptive Text Writing Achievement through Mind Mapping Technique

Abstract

Based on the findings of the previous studies, the use of Mind Mapping Technique could improve the students writing skill and helped the students generate and organize their ideas. Further, in Indonesia, the phenomenon about the difficulties of writing faced by the students also happens. Based on the interview with the English teacher of SMPN 1 Bangsalsari, it was found that the students experienced difficulties in organizing their ideas, in terms of cohesion, coherence, and unity in writing. Also, most of the students were not always active in the teaching and learning process of English. Hence, the researcher conducted this research in order to overcome the problems through Mind Mapping Technique as a prewriting technique for teaching writing. The objectives of this research were: (1) to enhance the students‟ descriptive writing achievement and (2) to know the students participation in the teaching and learning process of writing through Mind Mapping Technique. The design of this research was Classroom Action Research which covered four stages of activities namely: (1) planning, (2) implementing, (3) observing, and (4) reflection. In conducting this research, the researcher involved the English teacher as the collaborator. The researcher did the teaching process, while the English teacher as the observer. The data collection methods in this research were the students‟ writing test result and observation. This research was considered to be successful if at least 75% of the VIII F students achieved the standard score of the school, that is, 75. In addition 75% of the students were active in the teaching and learning process. This research was conducted in two cycles since the students‟ writing test results in first cycle did not achieve the research target. In the first cycle, the results of the students‟ writing test that get score at least or higher than 75 was 19 students or 63% of 30 students while in the second cycle there was 25 students or 78% of 32 students who achieved the criteria of success of this research. It indicated that the percentage of students‟ descriptive text writing achievement increased as much as 15% from cycle 1 to cycle 2. Meanwhile, the result of the observation showed that the students‟ participation improved 9% from 71% in the first cycle to 80% in the second cycle. It means that the success criteria of this research had been achieved. Hence, the action research was stopped and it was not necessary to continue to the next cycle. This research found that applying Mind Mapping Technique was able to enhance the students‟ writing achievement. After applying Mind Mapping technique in the prewriting activities, the students‟ could generate and organize their ideas, make a well-organized writing, select appropriate vocabulary, and use appropriate punctuations in their final writing. Moreover, Mind Mapping Technique could encourage the students‟ participation during the teaching and learning process by completing the Mind Mapping outline. As the result of this research showed that applying Mind Mapping Technique could enhance the students‟ writing achievement. The research gives some suggestion in order to give empirical and practical contributions. Empirically, it is expected that the results of this research are useful for other researchers who want to conduct a further research dealing with different research design, such as an experimental research to examine the effects of using Mind Mapping Technique on students‟ writing achievement; or using the same research design to know the contribution of each element in the Mind Mapping Technique enhance the quality of students‟ writing products; or using the same research design to improve the students‟ writing achievement by using Mind Mapping Technique on different text types such as: narrative, recount, and expository text; Practically, through the findings of this study, English teachers are expected to apply Mind Mapping as an alternative prewriting technique to help students generate and organize their ideas, then develop the ideas into writing a text easily.