Observation Questionnaire Research Instruments

B. Research Participants

The subjects or participants of this research were the lecturer and the students of ER II class of English Language Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University. The observation was conducted to two classes of the ER II Class. They were class A and B. The researcher observed all the classes because each class had its own dynamics, students’ interaction and also its own characteristics. The lecturer also became the participant of the interview. The interview was conducted to know how mind-mapping was implemented in the class. Besides the lecturer, the participants of this research involved the students from two classes of the four ER II classes class A and B, academic year 2006. There were fifty-five students of both ER II classes. Most of the students were 4 th semester’s students. All of them were the research subject of this research.

C. Research Instruments

Observation, interview, and questionnaire were used as instruments of this research.

1. Observation

According to Fraenkel and Wallen 1993, observation is used in order to know how people act or how things look like. In this research, the observation was used to gather data on how the mind-mapping technique was implemented. The observation was divided into two parts. The first part was the observation inside the class. This part consisted of eight points. The second part was the observation outside the class. In other words, the second part was the students’ behavior during making the mind-maps. This part consisted of eight statements. The researcher joined the class and observed how the class ran from the beginning until the end. It was conducted in three meetings to see the progress of the class. The researcher did not only observe the teacher’s activities in the class but also the students’ activities when they were making their mind-maps outside the class. See appendix 1.

2. Questionnaire

The second instrument was questionnaire. Ary, Jacobs, Razavieh 1990 state that a questionnaire was an instrument of the study to gather information through the respondents’ written responses to a list of questions. This instrument provided the researcher with information and suggestions of the students’ perception on the use of mind-mapping technique. The questionnaire was specialized to the students who used mind-mapping technique because there were some students who did not use mind-mapping in their ER II class. The questionnaire contained fourteen closed-ended questions and two opened-ended questions to be answered by the participants. The participants’ responses on the statements gave description on their perception and the participants’ answer on the one open-ended question gave their opinion and suggestion on the use of mind- mapping technique on ER II Class. Basically, the fourteen statements of the questionnaires were intended to know how the students perceived the use of mind-mapping technique in their learning Gibson et al., 1985 and Buzan 1991. The participants should be careful in responding to all the statements and questions especially in understanding what they experience in mind-mapping. The students were asked to respond to all the statements in the provided columns as their responses. The value of the responses was one to five. The value indicated their level of agreement. The value was for 1 for totally disagree, 2 for disagree, 3 for uncertain, 4 for agree, and 5 fro strongly agree. The totally agree or agree column was for those who had “good” perception on what they students did in their learning. The uncertain column was for the students who felt doubtful on what they perceived from their study. The students may be in between whether the students had well or bad perception. They may enjoy what they did in their learning but they may feel that there were some aspects they did not like.

3. Interview