Ability in Organizing Ideas Descriptive Text

17 Based on the Harmer‟s explanation, the researcher can conclude that writers revisit a certain stage from the stage of planning until the last stage which is final version. In the classroom activity, when the students want to write something, the first stage that they should do is the planning stage. In the planning stage, students can use mind mapping to produce or obtain the new ideas. In the drafting stage, students choose the optimal ideas to be included in the piece of writing. Editing means that students should put everything together in a coherent and cogent manner, whereas for the revising stage, students are asked to check their written work again. The students can produce the good final version after they have already done all of the stages.

3. Ability in Organizing Ideas

Ability is the fact that somebody is able to do something. Ability can be improved by doing the exersises. It means that ability in writing skill can also be improved by doing some assignments which are related to writing skill. Purves 1988 explains that students themselves commonly identify language difficulties, particularly an inadequate grasp of vocabulary or grammar and to convey their ideas in appropriate and correct English as cited in Hyland, 2003. The writer should understand some theories of writing a second language in different focus in order to produce the best writing product Hyland, 2003. The theories are language structures, text function, themes or topics, creative expression, composing process, content, and genre and contexts of writing. In order to achieve the ability in organizing ideas, the teacher helps the students to focus on the text function of descriptive text. One of the aims of this focus is to 18 help the students develop effective paragraph through the creation of the topic sentences, supporting sentences, and transition. Moreover, students are guided to produce connected sentences Hyland, 2003. The connected sentences gave the students or writers a paragraph coherence and demonstrate their writing skill.

4. Mind Mapping Technique

a. Definition of Mind Mapping

Michelco 1998 says that mind mapping is an organized brainstorming method and it makes learning, note-taking, and organizing ideas become simpler and easier. Buzan 1993 states that mind maps attempt, visually and graphically, to portray a relationship of ideas or concepts. In order to create a mind map, someone usually starts in the middle of the page with the central thememain idea and from that point, heshe works outward in all directions to create a growing diagram composed of keywords, phrases, concepts, facts, and figures. Buzan 1996 says that mind map, as well as encouraging the infinite continuous flow of ideas, enables the brain to be awake and alert by making the brain uses its skills. It means that by using mind mapping technique, students tend to use their brain to organize and specify their ideas before doing the writing tasks. Furthermore, it can also develop students‟ thinking skill. In addition, Anderson, et. al 1993 state that the method also activates the imagination, the combined use of words and symbols and also increases the creativity as well as thinking skill. Buzan 1993 describes mind maps as a representation of cognition and comprehension in learner, and as an excellent way to help learners express 19 themselves both verbally and visually. Therefore, when learners use the mind map, they may use graphic representation which may help in the brainstorming process. Brainstorming process helps the students to think although they do not have any ideas in their mind. The students or writers only need to write down all of things in their mind without thinking about the text organization until their creativity has found. By using brainstorming process, writer can find the most appropriate ideas to be used in the mind mapping. McGriff 2007 also finds that relating images to concepts is a creative task which requires thinking instead of memorizing. Adam and Mowers 2007, in a recent study, show that students who could express their learning with visual skills had a 40 higher retention rate than that of just verbal learners. This study shows that the use of mind mapping technique is a useful strategy to support students during writing tasks. Moreover, a study by Toi 2000 has a clear explanation about the use of mind mapping in increasing students‟ writing skill. Toi in his study found that the application of mind mapping in planning is a useful writing strategy that can improve students‟ writing skill. Therefore, the researcher used the mind mapping as the technique to increase students‟ ability in organizing ideas and also their writing skill.

b. Types of Mind Mapping

According to Buzan 2006, mind mapping can be divided into two types, namely hand-drawn mind maps and mind mapping software. The hand-drawn mind maps are the mind mapping which is drawn by someone with their own hands while mind mapping software is mind mapping which is drawn in a 20 computer software. Both types of mind mapping can help someone to organize their ideas. The explanations below are the examples of those two types of mind mapping. 1 Mind mapping software Tonny and Buzan 2003 state that mind mapping software or usually called as computer mind mapping is the „digital link‟ that allows people to input the data directory via the computer screen with a digital pen. This new software offers significant improvements in personal productivity in the areas of automatic mind map generation, editing, analyzing, creating different views of mind mapping in the form of computer software. The example of mind mapping software of computer mind mapping is presented in Figure 2.2. Figure 2.2: Example of Software Mind Mapping 2 Hand-Writing Mind Maps Hand-writing mind maps provide something different with the software or computer mind mapping. Buzan 1993 states that hand-writing mind maps become the traditional mind mapping technique. In hand-writing mind maps, the writers are asked to make their own mind mapping with their imagination and 21 creativity. The writer will draw the mind mapping with their own hands. This hand-writing mind maps give a free decision to the writers to make their mind mapping as interesting as they want. It means that each writer will produce different types of hand-writing. The example of hand-writing mind maps is presented in Figure 2.3. Figure 2.3: Example of Hand-writing Mind Mapping

c. Benefits of Mind Mapping

The benefits of mind mapping have been discussed by several writers; McGriff 2000, Buzan 2007, and Edward 2011. They believe that mind mapping can balance the brain, help to organize thoughts, and improve the creativity, speed of learning, and memory. According to Buzan 1993 besides helping someone in organizing their ideas, there are several other benefits that can 22 be found from using mind mapping. The benefits of mind mapping are presented as follows. 1 Someone can easily add some ideas in the mind mapping or add another link that related to the mind topic in a mind mapping 2 Mind mapping can help someone to concentrate on the information structure and relationship among the ideas. 3 By using the mind mapping, someone can really see the connections and similarities in the information

5. Descriptive Text

Mind mapping technique becomes one of many techniques which are trusted as the writing strategy. It means that mind mapping will be appropriate to be used in several kinds of text especially a descriptive text. According to Gerot and Wignell 1994, a descriptive text is a kind of text with a purpose to give information. The context of a descriptive text is the description of particular things, for example animals, persons, objects, appearances, landscapes, or natural phenomenon. Gerot and Wignell 1994 explain that the generic structure of descriptive text consists of two elements, namely identification and description. Identification gives the topic that can be described and the topic will be clarified in description. The topic can be appearances, quality or phenomenon. 23

B. Theoretical Framework

The researcher implemented the main theories in this research in order to address the research problems which w ere about students‟ responses to the use of mind mapping, students‟ improvement after using mind mapping, and students‟ suggestion to the further implementation of mind mapping. The explanation of the main theories presented as follows. 1. Research question 1: Students‟ responses to the use of mind mapping. The first research questio n is about students‟ responses to the use of mind mapping to increase ability in organizing their ideas in writing descriptive text. Students‟ responses will be various. Therefore, the researcher focuses on the students‟ action and thought McKechnie, 1981. Moreover, the researcher also discusses about students‟ perception and ways of thinking Braun, 1979. The students‟ responses will be about the students‟ satisfaction in using mind mapping as well as their experiences Braun, 1979. In this research, the experiences are about the use of mind mapping in writing a descriptive text. In line with the students‟ responses, the researcher uses the research from Pavlov 1972 about the unconditioned and conditioned response. The researcher also sees their responses as their motivation in using mind mapping when writing a descriptive text as it is stated by Garrison 2004. 2. Research question 2: Students‟ improvement after using mind mapping. The second research question is about students‟ improvement after using mind mapping in writing descriptive text. As it is stated above that writing is an action or a process discovering and organizing ideas, the writer should find an