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
