mapping, it is expected that the students would be easy to follow and to understand teacher’s explanations. Teaching descriptive texts by using mind
mapping would also be more of use; it can throw away students’ boredom and make them pay more attention to the lesson because they could use their
imagination and creativity during writing descriptive texts through mind mapping.
C. Limitation of the Problem
Based on the observation during the process of English teaching and learning and the interviews with the teacher and some students, it is considered
that there are many problems influencing the students’ difficulties in writing descriptive texts. However, it is impossible for the researcher to investigate and to
solve all the problems. After having discussion with the English teacher, the researcher would be aiming at improving students’ ability in writing descriptive
texts in terms of grammatical orders and their vocabularies through the mind mapping. Furthermore, their ability in generating ideas and organizing texts to be
a good writing would be improved as well with the simple and easy way of mind mapping.
Besides that, this research also focuses on students’ behaviors in the classroom. It is expected that through an exciting and creative way of mind
mapping, the students would pay more attention to the teacher’s explanation rather than doing other activities which distract their concentration on the lesson.
They hopefully would be active students during writing class and follow the process of English teaching and learning well because they are given a wide
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opportunity in using their imagination and creativity in writing descriptive texts by using mind mapping.
D. Formulation of the Problem
The problem of this research is formulated as follow: How can mind mapping be implemented for grade VII E students of SMPN 2 Gamping to
improve writing ability in descriptive texts?
E. Objectives of Research
The objective of this research is to improve the students’ ability in writing descriptive texts for grade VII E students of SMPN 2 Gamping in the academic
year of 20132014 by using mind mapping.
F. Significance of Research
It is expected that the result of the research can give contribution theoretically and practically.
1. Theoretical significance
Theoretically, this study is expected to enrich the knowledge on the techniques of teaching writing descriptive texts for students by using mind
mapping. 2.
Practical significance Practically, it is expected that this research is useful for:
a. The students
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It is expected that this research can help the students of SMPN 2 Gamping to learn and improve their ability in writing descriptive texts
well. b.
The English teachers It is expected that this research can provide an input for the teachers in
providing an alternative technique to improve students’ ability in writing descriptive texts through mind mapping.
c. Other researchers
This result may become one of the references to get information about the importance of mind mapping and to inspire for those who are
interested in conducting research studies using this technique. It also will enrich and enlarge the knowledge of teaching English, especially
in improving students’ ability in writing descriptive texts.
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED THEORIES
The study aims at finding out that using mind mapping could improve ability in writing descriptive texts for grade VII E students at SMPN 2 Gamping.
To support the understanding of the problem formulated in Chapter I, some theories related to the concepts of writing, teaching writing, descriptive texts and
mind mapping are reviewed. This chapter also presents some relevant research studies for this research followed by conceptual framework.
A. Literature Review
1. Writing
a. Nature of Writing
Troyka 1987: 3 states that writing is a way of communicating a message to a reader for a purpose. Communicating itself has meaning as sending. Therefore, a
message must have a destination. In the context of writing, there are three important elements, namely the text or the message, the writer who is presenting
it, and the reader. Those three elements should be coherent in order to reach the goal of writing for the purpose of communication.
Writing is a language skill which involves the activity of producing the language. That is why the writing skill tends to be considered more active than the
receptive skills Harmer, 2007: 265. It will need more efforts of the writer to produce a product in line with grammatical rules of English language.In
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