Background of the Problem

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Problem

According to Tiedt 1989 : 6, of all the language skill, writing is the most difficult; it is hard work. Writing needs hard thinking to produce idea, words, sentences, paragraph, and composition. Also, writing needs the right spelling, punctuation, word choice, and grammar. Therefore writing involves several components which have to be considered to make writing is not difficult while a learner is writing. In line, Richards and Renandya 2002 : 303 said that difficulty lies not only in generating and organizing ideas, but also in translating these ideas into readable text. Based on the current School-Based Curriculum, writing is one of the language skills that must be taught at junior high schoolIslamic junior high school SMPMTs. The teaching of writing aims at enabling students to master the functional texts and monologue texts or paragraphs in the form of descriptive, narrative, recount, procedure, and report. In addition, based on Competency Standard- Standar Kompetensi SK and Basic Competency- Kompetensi Dasar KD, the second year students are expected to be able to express meaningful ideas in term of functional text and simple short essay in the form of descriptive and recount to interact with people in their nearest environment. The work of writing is presented in the form of text types, usually known as genres, which are closely related to the purpose of each type. Descriptive writing is one of the text types that is taught at the eighth grade. 2 The fundamental problems complained by the English teacher at SMP N 4 Cibeber on English language learning, students writing ability is low, especially in the writing of the text, including descriptive text. It is indicated by the result of intervi ew to the English teacher in preliminary research that the students‟ difficulties come from the weaknesses of students ability in generating ideas that would be written into form of descriptive text. Therefore, they did not have ideas what to write first. In addition, the text that written by the students usually only consists of 1 to 3 sentences. Secondly, the students had difficulty in making the relevant writing with the topic. Also, the students had difficulty in choosing the words due to lack of vocabulary. Thirdly, students still had low ability in integrating between sentences. Moreover, the students got difficulties in the using of spelling and punctuation. Based on the researcher‟s observation while conducting preliminary research during teaching learning writing activity in the eight grade of SMP N 4 Cibeber-Lebak, the researcher found that many students at eight grade student of SMP N 4 Cibeber-Lebak had difficulty in writing descriptive paragraph. It was proved by the result of the students‟ writing test in preliminary research. The mean score of the students writing was 60.27, while the Minimum Mastery Criterion- Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimal KKM was 75.0. The result indicates that the students‟ writing achievement was still low. Furthermore, the students had low participation in writing class. It was in accordance with the result of students‟ questionnaire, the question is which one do you like of four basic skills listening, speaking, writing, reading in English?. The result of the question that the students who love to write is only 15.38. In addition, the process of teaching 3 and learning activities was monotonous. It made the students bored and the students had low participation in writing class. So, to make the students can produce descriptive paragraphs, there should be an effort to make writing class more interesting. Based on the result of preliminary study, the researcher concluded that the factors that can causing the students low ability to write descriptive text was a factor of its own students and from classroom teacher as the English teacher. Causative factor of the students were students tend to be less able to imagine, express ideas, and then pour it into the form of descriptive text. The students also had not be able to arrange words into sentences and put them together into a complete descriptive text. Next, the students were less pay attention to spelling and punctuation in writing descriptive text. Meanwhile, the factor that causes of the students had low ability to write descriptive text was the teacher lack of creativity in the use of tools or materials that can help students in the learning process. So, lack of the creativity of the teacher, it can make the students get difficulties in generating ideas, express ideas, even in making a complete descriptive text. Knowing that there was a problem in teaching writing, the teacher has to find a good technique which is appropriate for his classroom. The technique should make the students more creative and be able to generate ideas in writing descriptive text, because creativity in writing descriptive text is needed. Otherwise, the teacher should have a good teaching strategy. One of the teaching strategies that could help the teachers to make students more creative to improve students‟ writing ability in descriptive paragraph is using Mind Mapping. 4 Buzan 2004 : 17 said that mind maps can help you think creatively about anything, and thinking creatively is the way to achieve what you want. It is a learning strategy that can help students to facilitate their learning by generating and organizing the ideas about the topic they are going to write even in descriptive writing. So, by using Mind Mapping Strategy MMS can make students more imaginative and creative in writing class especially descriptive writing texts. Mind Mapping is expected can make a positive atmosphere in the classroom. According to Buzan 2004 : 10 a mind map is a colourful, visual form of note-taking that can be worked on by one person or a team of people. At its heart is a central idea or image. This is then explored by means of branches representing main ideas, which all connect to this central idea. It can throw away time consuming notes because it shows the shape of topic, related ideas and concepts, and the relative importance of all the information. Moreover, it could make students interested in teaching learning activity because it serves incorporated keywords, colors and images to make the student easier to generate their writing. This learning strategy is hoped can make students more active in writing class and can improve their ability in writing descriptive paragraph. In accordance to the explanation above, the researcher intends to conduct a classroom action research entitled: The Implementation of Mind Mapping Strategy MMS to Improve Students’ Descriptive Writing Ability at the Eighth Grade of SMP Negeri 4 Cibeber-Lebak. 5

1.2 Identification of the Problems