The Effect of Using Semantic Mapping Technique on the Eleventh Grade Students’ Report Text Writing Achievement at a Vocational High School in Jember

Abstract

This research was conducted to investigate the effect of semantic mapping technique on the eleventh grade students’ report text writing achievement at a vocational high school in Jember in the 2017/2018 academic year. Writing is a complex skill that need much effort to be done. The students often find the dificulties to produce a good writing, from generating ideas into the final writing. The teacher should find an effective teaching technique for teaching writing. The researcher conducted an experimental research by using Semantic Mapping Technique to teach writing through the process of writing. This technique involved a process on its implementation, which in each step was provided guidance or assistance. As part of learning strategies, Semantic mapping has been used in various ways to enhance the teaching and learning processes,has become an important issue of investigation. Some advantages of using Semantic mapping are: (1) It clearly defines the central idea, by positioning it in the center of the page; (2) It allows the students to indicate clearly the relative importance of each idea; (3) It allows the students to figure out the links of the key ideas more easily; (4) It allows the students to see all their basic information on one page ; (5) It allows the students to add in new information without messy scratching out or sequencing it;(6) It makes easier for the students to see the information in different way, from different view points because it does not lock it into specific position. The research participantsof this research were the eleventh grade students of SMK 4 Jember in the 2017/2018 academic year. that included experimental and control class were determined by using cluster random sampling after testing the mean scores of the English test using ANOVA. Based on the result of ANOVA, XI AP 1 was chosen as the experimental class, while XI AP 2 was chosen as the control class. The design of this research was a quasi-experimental research with pot-test only design. In this design, the experimental and control class received different treatments. The experimental class was taught by semantic mapping, while the control class was taught by scientific approach. The post-test was given to the both classes after they received the treatments. Based on the result of Independent sample T-test, it was found that the value of significant (2 tailed) was 0,000. Thus, it can be concluded that the hypothesis (H0) was rejected while the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted. In other word, it can be said that there was a significant effect of using Semantic Mapping Technique on students’ writing achievement.