5 Incorporate colors to show relationships The colors should be used in addition to shapes, symbols
and. Creativity is needed in using the colors. In brief, there are five simple steps to make a mind map.
Students need to decide the main concept first then associate it with the ideas following the concept. To make the mind map more
communicative and interesting, they need to draw some images and gave some colors to the mind map.
B. Relevant Studies
There are some previous studies that were conducted by researchers related to using mind mapping technique in teaching writing skill and
teaching in general. Goodnough and Woods 2002 conducted a research which focused on the perceptions of 15 students of six grade class after
developing the skill of mind maps and using it in some ways in an on-line curriculum. The students perceived mind maps as a fun, interesting and
motivating approach to learning. 10 out of 15 students either strongly agreed or agreed that they enjoyed creating mind maps.
Then, Arrohmah 2014 conducted an action research using mind mapping technique to improve students’ writing skills at SMP N 1
Ngemplak. Her students had some problems in learning writing skill such as having less motivation, having lack of idea to write, and having poor
ability in using writing aspects. Based on the research, mind mapping
technique was considered successful to improve students’ learning motivation and writing ability. There were some improvements in the
content, organization, vocabulary, language use and mechanics of the students’ written text.
Similar research was conducted by Wardani 2011. She conducted an action research to improve writing descriptive text of students of tenth
grade at SMA N 1 Godong. The writing was themed “My Idol”. The students were asked to write descriptive text about people and the idea was
gathered using mind mapping technique. The result of using mind mapping was that students’ post-test scores were better than the pre-test.
According to the researcher, it was done well because mind mapping was an interesting activity, so the motivation in learning was also improved.
In accordance with previous studies, mind mapping is an effective technique to improve students’ writing skills. It can also help students to
gather more ideas in the pre-writing stage of writing a text. In addition, by consisting colorful images, the mind mapping technique makes the
learning more interesting, therefore it can maintain students’ motivation in learning writing skill.
C. Conceptual Framework
