Relevant Studies Conceptual Framework

B. Relevant Studies

There are some studies related to the use of mind mapping to improve writing skills. The first is the study conducted by Shamma Al-Naqbi. Al-Naqbi 2011 conducted the research in a government high school located in the United Arab Emirates UAE. The target population was the female students of Grade XI, English as a Foreign Language EFL learners aged between sixteen and seventeen years. The finding of the study was improvement in the students’ final writing outcomes. The result showed that the students were able to plan their ideas effectively using the mind mapping technique so that they produced well organized reports. The students were able to create between the ideas on their maps and their writing. The mind mapping technique can help in developing students’ cognition skills and aid in information recovery in an assessment situation. The other research was conducted by Lismawati. The subject of the study was eight grade students at SMP N 2 Depok in Yogyakarta. This study aimed at improving the students’ writing ability. Lismawati 2013 states that mind mapping was effective to improve the students’ writing ability. By mind mapping, the students made considerable improvement in their writings. They also showed positive response toward the teaching and learning process. The students were more active in joining the lesson and also in doing the tasks. Mind maps gave them chances to use their imagination and also to be creative. Besides, mind mapping was also useful to encourage and motivate the students in learning writing.

C. Conceptual Framework

English consists of four skills i.e., listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Writing is one of the productive skills. It means that writing is not an easy skill to be learned. Many students of English have difficulties in learning writing. The major problem is difficulty in developing ideas when making a piece of writing. As a consequence, it also causes problem in organizing their ideas too. When the students have difficulties in generating ideas, they tend to feel confused in deciding the supporting ideas from the main idea. It makes the supporting ideas not consecutive and unorganized with the main topic. There are many techniques that can be used to solve this kind of problems. One of the most effective techniques that the teachers can use is mind-mapping. Hillar 2012 says that mind mapping is a great tool to organize the thought processes of the students when writing. Mind maps also can be used as a great cognitive tool to arrange and organize information when studying or presenting students with a new topic. Those benefits can be the best way to solve the students’ problems in writing. After analyzing the problems of the students, the researcher decided to use mind mapping as a technique to improve their writing skills. Mind maps have some aspects that can be very useful in teaching writing. Besides, mind maps also offer different atmosphere for the students in generating ideas so that they can be motivated and also make them thinking creatively. The researcher conducted the research in SMP N 3 Depok, Yogyakarta. This research aimed at improving the students’ writing skills of grade eight in class B in the academic year of 20142015. 31

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD

A. Type of the Research

This research was aimed at improving the students’ writing skills of eighth grade students in class B in SMP N 3 Depok through mind mapping. Therefore, this research was classified as action research in which the focus of this research is on improving certain situations of the English teaching and learning process. According to Burns 2010 action research is research which involves taking a self-reflective, critical and system approach to explore teaching contexts. Action research aimed at identifying certain problems or issues in the teaching learning process more deeply and solving them. It involves data gathering, reflection on the action as it is presented through the data, generating evidence from the data, and making claims to knowledge based on conclusions drawn from validated evidence. Mcniff, 2006 I worked together with the English teacher and the collaborator to collect the data related with the weaknesses and the obstacles of the English teaching and learning process especially writing skills. After collecting the data, the other things to do were identifying the problems, planning and implementing the actions, and evaluating and reflecting the actions.