Review of Related Research

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F. Review of Related Research

Kamal Muhtar 2010 conducted a classroom action research entitled “Improving Students’ Reading Comprehension through Semantic mapping Strategy’. The subject of this research is the eighth grade students of SMPN 1 Sine in the academic year of 20092010. It was conducted for about two years. The objective of the research was to examine whether the use of semantic mapping strategy can improve the students’ reading comprehension. The results of the research showed that semantic mapping strategy was able to improve the students’ reading comprehension and the class situation also improved. The class became more enjoyable and fun. The students became more active individually and in group. There were some advantages of using semantic mapping strategy in teaching-learning of reading as follows: 1 using the semantic mapping strategy in the pre-reading phase could stimulat e the students’ prior knowledge schemata; 2 using the semantic mapping strategy in the whilst-reading phase helped the students to record the information obtained from the text; and 3 using the semantic mapping strategy in the post-reading phase provided the students with an overall description about the text. Swee et. al. 2003 in the article entitled “Developing Reflective and Thinking skills by Means of Semantic Mapping Strategis in Kindergarten Teacher Education ” concluded that the use of semantic mapping strategies as a tool for develophing reflective and thinking startegies among kindergarten students-teachers. Strategies applied to alleviating these worries and negative feeling included clarification of the basic concept, assessment criteria and teaching strategies to be adopted. Most important of all was a realization that commit to user 37 modelling reflective practice was essential if students-teachers were expected to experience reflective practice in action for themselves so that they could become reflective practicioners as well. Another study about semantic mapping comes from Susilowati 2006. She carried out the study entitled “Improving Studens’ Writing Skill by Using Semamntic Mapping” at eleventh grade students of SMA Negri 2 Ungaran in athe academic year of 20052006. From the result, it was known that semantic mapping is effective for improving skill on writing report text. It was proved by increasing of scoring rate. The scoring rate for pre-cycle is 5.05, while in the first cycle, the scoring rate is 5.77 and for the second cycle getting score 6.92. She also explained that semantic mapping in improving writing skill can help students to organize the imformation they have systematically. The quality of the students writing can be influenced by choicing the right topic. Zaid. 1955 wrote a paper entitled “Semantic Mapping in Communicative Language Teaching”, He tried to show how semantic mapping can bocome an effective technique in the CLT classroom. A map, like a picture, can be worth a thousand words. It can stimulate the EFL students to talk, and encourage them to listen. Semantic Mapping incorporates many of aspect of CLT which have been found to benefit students in a learning second language such as: it is students centered, interactive activity, predictive activity, intergrative activity, etc. Other research on semantic mapping was conducted by Aprilianto 2009 who carried out a classroom action reserach entitled Using Semantic Mapping Technique to Improve Reading Ability of IX- Grade of MTs Ma’arif Sukorejo- commit to user 38 Pasuruan. This research find out that semantic mapping technique is successful in improving both the students’ ability in comprehending English text and thestudents’ involvement in reading activity. The improvement can be seen from the students’ mean score and individual score precentage from preliminary study to cycle 2. The students’ mean score had improved greatly from 35.00 to 68.33. While, the students’ individual score extented from 0 to 44.44 equal than 70. The scores obtained by the students in the two cycles were shown by reading comprehension tests. Last, Raizienie, Saule and Bronishlava Grigaite 2005 wrote on journal of the humanities and social sciences entiled “Developing Child’s thinking skill by Semantic Mapping Str ategies”. In this journal, they explained that semantic mappingwebbing can be used for promoting teachers and school principals reflective and critical thinking skills. It also examined cognitive outcomes, stimulated by the teacher use of semantic mapping as a strategy for accelerating two cognitive operations, classification, and seriation in a child’s seventh year.

G. Rationale