Background of the Study

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

English is an international language which is commonly used by most people in the world. The use of English in each country can be different depending on the country policy whether it regards English as the first, second or foreign language. There are four basic skills of English based on Curriculum 2006 or KTSP Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan. They are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Furthermore, writing is considered as the most difficult skill to be learnt for some reasons . As stated by Richards and Renandya 2002: 303, they explain that writing is the hardest skill for L2 learners to be mastered since L2 learners have to put much attention to various aspects of writing. In addition, Crystal 2005 asserts that writing lacks visual contact which participants cannot rely on context to make their meaning clear, nor is there any immediate feedback. Writers must also anticipate the effects of the time-lag between production and reception, and the problems posed by having their language read and interpreted by many recipients in different settings. By mastering writing skill, people can convey their purpose and information to others. Good writing can facilitate the readers to understand the purpose and information that the writer delivers. In addition, the importance of writing is not only seen as the social needs, but it is also important in education field as stated by Harmer 2004: 3 that literacy skills – ability to read and write – are essential skills for world populations. In an education context, however, it is not easy for a teacher to teach writing, and similarly, it is not easy for students to master the writing skill. For ESL students, it is difficult to arrange words to become a good English written text. As stated by Silva 1993 in Brown 2001: 339, ESL students tend to do less planning, less fluent by using fewer words, make more errors, and less effective in organizing materials. Based on the observation, interviews and test conducted at 8 A of SMP N 4 Sleman, there were some problems related to the writing skill teaching and learning process. The problems came from the teacher, the students, the teaching and learning media and the activity. From the teacher, she used more Bahasa Indonesia when explaining materials and communicating with the students so it might be hard to motivate the students to use written or spoken English in the classroom. It would be a good input for students if the teacher used more English either in giving explanations of writing skill or giving feedback for students’ writing product. From the students, it seemed that they had difficulty in gathering their ideas. Some students took a long time to think of what they were going to write. Some minutes passed but some students still had not written a single sentence yet. After spending some minutes thinking and finding what they wanted to write, they did not know how to develop and organize it into a good paragraph. As a result, some of the students could only write few sentences and even without a title in the text. Subsequently, a good written text could be produced if the writers have sufficient knowledge of writing skills. The knowledge about writing skills such as grammar and vocabulary could be useful to write a certain text. Yet, it did not happen in the classroom observed. The students found it difficult to find appropriate words to be used in the paragraph. Unfortunately, there were only a few students who brought a dictionary. They also had difficulty in grammar. The students sill used simple present tense, whereas they should use simple past tense in writing a recount text. In addition, some students sometimes mispelled some words in their text such as “shcool” when it should be “school” and “arifed” when it should be “arrived”. There was also a little attempt at connectivity between sentences written by the students so the readers could hardly deduce some organization. Besides, the students were not given enough writing practice. The writing activities were frequently in the form of note-taking and writing in groups. The lack of writing practice was probably the cause of the lack ability of their writing skills. Having difficulty in gathering and expressing ideas and using appropriate writing aspects were not the only problems that came from the students. During learning process, there were always some students who were not motivated to engage in the activities. Some of them did not say a word when the teacher asked them a question. They even expressed some sighs when they were asked to write a paragraph. In addition, the students did not focus their attention to the teacher’s explanations. The lack of students’ focus to the lesson was probably caused by the lack of interesting media use by the teacher. The teacher always used whiteboards in explaining the materials and it seemed that the students were not interested in it. The teacher actually tried to use media such as realia to explain the materials. Yet, the realia did not keep the students’ attention towards the lesson for a long time. As a result, most of the students then made random noises, talked to their friends and did not pay attention to the teacher’s explanation. It distracted both teacher’s and students’ concentration. Based on the findings above, there were some problems related to students’ writing skills. In this research, the researcher tried to improve students’ writing skills and motivation in learning English. To solve those problems, mind mapping technique was considered as a suitable technique. There are many advantages obtained by a writer if he or she applies mind mapping technique. The mind mapping technique is used in the pre- writing activity to help the students to raise, develop and organize ideas to write a text. According to Buzan 2004: 10, mind mapping is frequently used to help people to explore ideas, concept or problem. Willis and Willis 2007: 79 also mention that mind mapping can be used to help a writer to focus on relevant information, to think of what aspects of the topic to talk or write about and to organize information coherently. In addition, Goodnough and Woods 2002 discovered that the students in their study perceived mind mapping as a fun, interesting and motivating approach to learning.

B. Identification of the Problems