Students` perception on using mind mapping in prewriting step to poster students` writing skills - USD Repository
STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION ON USING MIND MAPPING
IN PREWRITING STEP TO FOSTER
STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILLS A THESISPresented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree in English Language Education
By Rizki Ayu Purwojati
061214070
ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA
STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION ON USING MIND MAPPING
IN PREWRITING STEP TO FOSTER
STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILLS A THESISPresented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree in English Language Education
By Rizki Ayu Purwojati
061214070
ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA
ABSTRACT
Purwojati, Rizki Ayu. 2010. Students’ Peception on Using Mind Mapping to Foster
Students’ Writing Skill . Yogyakarta: English Language Education Study Program,
Universitas Sanata Dharma.In this research, the researcher would study about the students’ perception on using mind mapping in prewriting step to foster students’ writing skills and the students’ suggestions on using mind mapping in their class or their own writing. Mind mapping was one of the writing strategies which could help the users to determine some sub- topics systematically. The reason why the researcher intended to study about the use of mind mapping as prewriting strategy was the researcher’s experience when working with mind mapping in a prewriting composition. There were two research problems in this research. The first was to know what the students’ perception on using mind mapping in prewriting step to foster students’ writing skill was and the second was to know what the students’ suggestions of the implementation of mind mapping either in Writing class or in their own writing were.
The method of this research was descriptive research involving questionnaire and interview. The questionnaire was distributed to the three different classes of Research
Paper Writing 2009/2010 academic year. The total of the questionnaire respondents
were 57. From this total respondents were taken 4 respondents randomly to be interviewed. The results of this research gained from questionnaire and interview was that respondents were familiar with mind mapping as prewriting strategy and facilitated using mind mapping in prewriting. However, it did not mean respondents were often to use mind mapping in prewriting because of several factors, for examples limited time and habits. However, they thought the strategy was effective in prewriting step. Therefore, the researcher concluded that students had positive perception on using mind mapping in prewriting step to foster students’ writing skills because mind mapping led the users to write systematically with clear and detailed topics. Besides, to encourage students’ interests to use mind mapping was to produce mind mapping more interesting by drawing images and coloring. Keywords: perception, writing, mind mapping and metacognitive learning strategy.
ABSTRAK
Purwojati, Rizki Ayu. 2010. Students’ Peceptions on Using Mind Mapping to Foster
Students’ Writing Skills . Yogyakarta: Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris,
Universitas Sanata Dharma.Dalam penelitian ini, penulis akan meneliti tentang persepsi mahasiswa terhadap penggunaan mind mapping dalam tahap prewriting untuk mendorong kemampuan menulis mahasiswa dan saran mahasiswa dalam penggunaan mind mapping dalam kelas atau untuk mereka sendiri. Mind mapping adalah salah satu strategi menulis yang dapat membantu penggunanya untuk dapat menentukan sub-topik secara sistematis.
Alasan mengapa peneliti meneliti mengenai penggunaan mind mapping sebagai strategi sebelum menulis adalah dari pengalaman penulis saat menggunakan mind mapping dalam menyusun suatu karangan sebelum menulis. Dalam penelitian ini terdapat dua permasalahan. Yang pertama yaitu untuk mengetahui persepsi mahasiswa dalam menggunakan mind mapping pada tahap
prewriting untuk meningkatkan ketrampilan menulis mahasiswa dan saran mahasiswa
dalam penerapan mind mapping di kelas Writing maupun saat menulis sendiri.Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah penelitian descriptive yang meliputi kuesioner dan wawancara. Kuesioner dibagikan di tiga kelas berbeda
Research Paper Writing tahun ajaran 2009/2010. Total responden kuesioner
berjumlah 57. Dari total responden kuesioner diambil 4 responden secara acak untuk diwawancara. Hasil penelitian yang diperoleh dari kuesioner dan wawancara adalah bahwa para responden telah mengenal mind mapping sebagai strategi prewriting dan terbantu menggunakan mind mapping dalam tahap prewriting. Namun, ini bukan berarti para responden sering menggunakan mind mapping karena berbagai faktor, misalnya keterbatasan waktu dan kebiasaan. Tetapi, mereka berpendapat bahwa strategi ini efektif untuk digunakan dalam tahap prewriting. Penulis dapat menyimpulkan bahwa mahasiswa mempunyai persepsi positif terhadap penggunaan mind mapping ditahap prewriting untuk mendorong kemampuan menulis siswa karena mind mapping mengarahkan penggunanya untuk menulis secara sistematik dengan topik yang jelas dan terperinci. Selain itu, untuk menumbuhkan minat mahasiswa untuk menggunakan mind mapping adalah membuat mind mapping lebih menarik dengan gambar dan warna. Kata kunci: persepsi, menulis, mind mapping dan strategi belajar metacognitif.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I would like to express my greatest praise to Allah SWT. for the amazing grace and endless blessing during the completion of my thesis. I believe that without His remarkable help I could not have finished this thesis.
I would like to express my highest gratitude to my major sponsor C.
Tutyandari, S. Pd., M. Pd. for her suggestions, kindness, and patience in helping me
finishing this thesis. My appreciation also goes to all the lecturers, and the secretariat staff, Maria Martarine Pramudani and Chatarina Artilantari, and all the librarians in Sanata Dharma University.
My deepest gratitude also goes to my parents, my beloved father,
Soemarsono, and my dearest mother, Rumini. I would like to thank them for their
endless prayers, sacrifices, supports and love they give me. I also would say thanks to my brothers, Toto and Ma’ nug, and my sister in-law, Mbak Dyah and Mbak Erni, for their undying love, care and supports.
I thank my friends, Mbak Opha, Loritha, Fr. Jun, Mbak Arian and Mbak
Dian, for their advices, inspirations, and criticism in finishing this thesis. I also thank
my best friends, Vika, Bu ben, Tata, Mbety, and Satrio, during my study and for their attention, supports and fun experiences. I thank my all ‘Dreamworkers’,
Guntur, Berlin, Adi, Ika, and Fr. Zaq, for their supports and cooperation in finishing my thesis. I would say thanks to my dearest friend for his love, supports, prayers, care, patience, all beautiful experiences and life we had shares.
I also thank to all CEC staff for their support and help in my last struggle in finishing this thesis. I thank my friends in my ‘greenhouse’ boardinghouse, Della,
Rida, Wiwied, and Anna, for the fun experiences and films, and for their kindness to
accompany me in every nights during finishing this thesis. I also thank my undying friends in my hometown, Fitri, Hayu and Novi, for their supports, all experiences and all things we had shared about life.
Last but not least, my thanks also go to all PBI’06 students, who I cannot mention one by one, for the nice friendship we had together.
Rizki Ayu Purwojati
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page TITLE PAGE ............................................................................................................... i APPROVAL PAGES .................................................................................................. ii STATEMENT OF WORK’S ORIGINALITY .......................................................... iv PAGE OF PUBLICITY ............................................................................................ v ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. vi
ABSTRAK ............................................................................................................... vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................... viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................ x LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................... xv
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................... 1 A. Research Background ................................................................ 1 B. Problem Formulation ................................................................ . 3 C. Problem Limitation ...................................................................... 4 D. Research Objectives ................................................................. 4 E. Research Benefits ...................................................................... 5
1. Teachers who teach Writing Subject .................................. 5
2. Writing Students or Readers .............................................. 5
3. Future Researchers ........................................................... 6
F. Definition of Terms ................................................................... 6
1. Writing Skill ...................................................................... 6
2. Prewriting Step .................................................................... 7
3. Mind mapping .................................................................... 7
CHAPTER II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE ......................................... 8 A. Theoretical Description ............................................................. 8
1. Perception ............................................................................... 8
a. Definition of Perception ................................................... 8 b.Factors Influencing Perception ........................................ 9
1) Selection of Stimuli ................................................... 10 2) Organization of Stimuli ............................................ 10 3) The Situation .............................................................. 10 4) Person’s Self-Concept ................................................ 11
2. Writing ................................................................................. 11
a. Prewriting Step ............................................................... 12
b. Writing Step .................................................................. 12
c. Rewriting Step ................................................................. 13
3. Learning Strategies ............................................................... 13
a. Metacognitive Learning Strategy ................................... 14 1) Planning ......................................................................... 15
a. Advance Organizer .................................................. 15 b.Directed Attention ................................................... 15
c. Selective Attention .................................................... 15 d.Self-management ...................................................... 15
e. Advance Preparation ................................................ 15 2) Monitoring ..................................................................... 15 3) Evaluation ...................................................................... 16
b. Cognitive Learning Strategy ........................................... 16 1) Repetition ...................................................................... 16 2) Resourcing .................................................................... 16 3) Directed Physical Response ...................................... 17 4) Translation .................................................................. 17
c. Social Affective Learning Strategy ................................. 17 1) Cooperation .................................................................... 17 2) Question for Clarification ......................................... 17
4. Mind Mapping ...................................................................... 17
B. Theoretical Framework ............................................................. 18
CHAPTER III. METHODOLOGY ....................................................................... 21 A. Research Method ..................................................................... 21 B. Research Respondents ............................................................ 21 C. Research Instruments ............................................................... 22
1. Questionnaire ....................................................................... 23
2. Interview .............................................................................. 24
D. Data Gathering Technique ........................................................ 24
E. Data Analysis Technique ........................................................ 25
F. Research Procedures ................................................................. 27
CHAPTER IV. RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ............................... 29 A. Research Results .................................................................... 29
1. The Results of the Questionnaire ......................................... 29
a. Students’ Perceptions in Prewriting Step ................ 31
b. Students’ Perceptions on Mind Mapping as Prewriting Strategy .................................................. 33
c. Students’ Perceptions on Mind Mapping to Foster Students’ Writing Skills ........................................... 33
d. Students’ Suggestions on the Implication of Using Mind Mapping ........................................................... 34
2. The Results of the Interview ................................................. 35
B. Discussion ............................................................................... 38
1. Students’ Perception on Mind Mapping as Prewriting Strategy to Foster Students’ Writing Skills .......................... 38
2. Students’ Suggestions on the Use of Mind Mapping to Foster Students’ Writing Skills either in Writing class or their own Writing .............................................................. 42
CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS ........................................ 45 A. Conclusions ................................................................................ 45 B. Suggestions ................................................................................ 46 REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 46 APPENDICES ......................................................................................................... 48 Appendix A: Letter of Research Permission .................................................... 50 Appendix B: Questionnaire Blueprint and Questionnaire ................................. 52 Appendix C : Sample of Questionnaire Results ................................................. 56 Appendix D: Questionnaire Results on Opened-form Questions ...................... 63 Appendix E: Interview Blueprint ...................................................................... 70 Appendix F: Interview Results ......................................................................... 72 Appendix G: The Example of Student’s Mind Mapping ................................. 76
LIST OF TABLES
Page
Table 3.1. : Questionnaire Blueprint ....................................................................... 23Table 3.2. : Interview Guide ................................................................................... 24Table 3.3. : Data Analysis Technique ..................................................................... 26Table 4.4. : The Percentage of Each Statement of Closed-form Questions in theQuestionnaire ..................................................................................... 30
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION This chapter is going to provide the readers the basic information of the
research related to the subject matter. It provides why researcher intends to do the research on the use of mind mapping in prewriting step to foster students’ writing skill and the general aims of the research. The chapter consists of six sections. They are research background, problem formulation, problem limitation, research objectives, research benefits and definition of terms.
A. Research Background
The main reason why the researcher intends to study about the use of mind mapping in the field of writing was the researcher’s experience when working with mind mapping in a prewriting composition. Actually, the very first experience was when the researcher worked with mind mapping in comprehending the reading passage, especially if it was a very long reading passage. It seems easier to comprehend the reading passage using mind mapping than using the other strategies, named brainstorming, listing and drawing. Then the mind mapping can also be applied in writing field. As been taught by the teacher of writing subject that mind mapping can also be used to explore the main topic in writing a composition, the researcher tried to use mind mapping in the prewriting step then the researcher began to enjoy working with mind mapping. Afterwards, the researcher accustomed to using mind mapping without any instruction before writing.
Based on the researcher’s opinion, writing is one of the skills that should be mastered by people who learn a language, either as the first language or the second language. The four skills in the language proficiency are listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. Those skills have a relationship. The statement is supported by Tiedt (1989: 1), “All language skills are inherently interdependent”.
Since writing is not only used to academic needs but also in daily life, writing is very essential in learning a language. As Ellis (2003: 1) states that writing is not just a classroom exercise but it can be used to the real world. The statement implicitly means that the classroom is a place where students learn and practice the skill used not only in the college itself, for academic purpose, but also in the real world.
Writing is not a simple thing. Based on the researcher’s experience that finding a topic to be discussed in a composition is easy but to organize the topic into inter- related subtopics and to compose them into an essay is difficult. Baskoff said that a student writing a composition faces three problems: what to say, how to organize, and how to say (1969: 3). The three problems challenge both students and teacher to succeed the writing subject. However, the teacher may avoid the problems by giving the theories of writing process before students start writing a composition, including a strategy to begin a writing composition (Dewirini, 2009). Mind mapping can be the strategy in prewriting step to facilitate students composing essay writing. As THINK enables students to see the relationship between ideas, and encourages them to group certain ideas together as they proceed”.
Furthermore, the research will conduct on the students’ perceptions on the use of mind mapping in prewriting step to foster students’ writing skills. The research is going to go deeper on the students’ perceptions on the use of mind mapping in writing, whether mind mapping can work in prewriting step effectively or not based on students’ perceptions. The students’ perceptions toward the use of mind mapping in the prewriting step are able to influence their behavioral responses on the use of mind mapping. The statement is supported by Altman, Valenzi and Hodgetts (1985: 84) who said that the way the students perceive on something, whether in a positive way or in a negative way, influence their behavioral responses.
B. Problem Formulation
There are two problems which are going to be discussed on this paper. They are:
1. What is the students’ perception on using mind mapping in prewriting step to foster students’ writing skills?
2. What is the students’ recommendation of the implementation of mind mapping either in Writing class or in their own writing?
C. Problem Limitation
Seeing that writing is one of the English learning subjects that is taught from elementary school until senior high school, even university, the writer is motivated to know deeper about improving writing skill using one of the methods in prewriting step, called mind mapping. This research focuses on the students’ perception on the use of mind mapping to foster students’ writing skill of writing subject in sixth semester in Sanata Dharma University.
Some methods in prewriting step assist students arranging composition, e.g. brainstorming, mind mapping, and also outlining. However, this research only studies about the use of mind mapping in its role of assisting students building up their ideas.
Then, the study focuses on students’ perceptions on the use of mind mapping as a method to foster students’ writing skills in prewriting step and also students’ suggestions toward the use of mind mapping in their writing class.
D. Research Objectives
Since mind mapping leads the writing activity easier, thus it can motivate students to write an essay. Based on the background of the research, the objectives of the research are to know the students’ perceptions on using mind mapping as a method to foster students’ writing skills in prewriting step and to give suggestions toward the using of mind mapping in writing class.
E. Research Benefits
This research is expected to give some contribution to English language teaching, especially for:
1. Teachers who teach Writing subject
This research explores information about students’ perceptions on the use of mind mapping as a method to foster students’ writing skills in prewriting step. The students’ perceptions on the use of mind mapping can be varied. It can be either negative perceptions or positive perceptions. The negative perceptions can help the teachers to make an evaluation on the use of mind mapping in writing class as a method to foster students’ writing skills in prewriting step. Then, teachers can minimize the factors causing those negative perceptions. Whereas from students’ positive perceptions can be used as a foundation for teacher to create writing learning by mind mapping better and more enjoyable.
2. Writing Students or Readers
Since this research also defines learning strategies, thus, it enables the students to know more about the importance of the right selection of learning strategies. It means the right selection of learning strategies by the students will affect the result of learning task. Therefore, the students have to know the learning strategy that work effectively with him/her.
3. Future researchers
This research surely still needs further research to provide better understanding about the use of mind mapping as a method to foster students’ writing skills in prewriting step. The research is expected to give inspirations to other researchers to do further discussion related to the topic of using mind mapping in writing subject.
F. Definition of Terms
1. Writing Skill
Writing is producing something in written form so that people can read and perform it or use it. (Hornby, 2003: 502). It means that in teaching writing the teacher reinforces the students to produce something in written form so that people can read it. Based on Gateways to Academic Writing by Alan Meyers and Harry S. Truman (2005), writing skill is a skill in speaking to others both on paper and on computer screen. In more specific words, writing is such a working process to explore and to organize ideas then put them on the paper, organized as written.
2. Prewriting Step
In writing process, there are three steps to do; they are pre-writing step, writing process and rewriting step (Gerson, 2003: 12). However, the researcher is going to concern more in pre-writing step. The reason is that mind mapping is a part of pre-writing step.
The objective of pre-writing is to gain what is going to be discussed on the paper or in the essay writing. It is an important step of the writing process to begin collecting a writer’s thought. Then, he can start organizing the thought. The statement supported by Simon and Schuster as they said in their book, entitled
Handbook for Writers, is that pre-writing helps a writer to organize the thoughts
and knowledge about a topic.3. Mind Mapping
Mind mapping is one of the pre-writing strategies that enables students to arrange a topic and to correlate the subtopics. Steele (2005) stated in her article on
Using Mind Maps to Develop Writing, that a mind map, or spidergram, is a
strategy for making notes on a topic, prior to writing. The method is also called webbing or clustering. Mind-mapping is effective to apply in writing class today aims to build up a topic into some interrelated subtopics. The statement is supported by Halen (2009) in his article, entitled Showing the Linkages from an
Issue, Concept or Problem with Other Concepts or Issues , that mind mapping is a
learning technique tool of visually arranging ideas and their interconnections.CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE This chapter presents all the references and quotations that are used to
support the research. There will be two parts of the research. They are theoretical description and theoretical framework.
A. Theoretical Description 1. Perception a. Definition of Perception
Perception is the main term in the research to be discussed firstly to answer the first problem of the research. In this section, the researcher will discuss not only about the definition of perception but also the related theories to the perception.
According to Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (Hornby, 1995: 859), perception is defined as a way of seeing, understanding, and interpreting something.
In this research, the perception refers to what we feel and think that comes up to the students’ feelings and thoughts about the use of mind mapping as a method to foster students’ writing skills in prewriting step.
Szilagyi and Wallace (1980: 70) said, “Perception is defined to process by stimuli into a message that in turn indicates an appropriate action and behavior”. This statement means that perception equals to the interpretation of the environmental stimuli, both behavior and phenomenon.
While according to Hardi and Heyes (1988: 85) “The basic form of perception is people’s born talent, meanwhile perceptional ability is the result of learning which is determined by the environment.” In other words, the researcher can conclude that perception is the way a man views a phenomenon based on their own experiences toward the phenomenon.
Stipek (1993: 141) stated that perceptions of ability play an important role in achievement motivation. In conclusion, those individuals’ motivations in achieving objective of learning are affected by the learners’ perceptions toward the subject matter, whether he has a good or bad perception. As what Sarah and Hawes argued in English Teaching Forum October 4 (1994:22-24), teachers have to shape learners’ positive perceptions to exploit their motivation to improve the ability to speak English fluently.
b. Factors Influencing Perception
Individuals’ perceptions toward the subject matter are influenced by some factors. Altman, Valenzi and Hodggets (1985: 86) stated that there are four important factors influence a person’s perception. They are selection of stimuli, organization of stimuli, the situation and the person’s self-concept.
1) Selection of Stimuli Selection is a process which focuses only on a small number of stimuli.
Gerson (2003: 86) argued why people perceive things differently-each person selects specific cues and filters, or screens, out the others. The statement means the selection of stimuli is the reason why people have different perceptions because each person accepts different stimuli and selects the stimuli of things to them.
2) Organization of Stimuli
This factor means that person’s information which has come to the person is filtered, and then it must be arranged to become meaningful information.
Afterwards, the person accepts the information well.The mind brings order out the disorganized information by selecting certain things and putting them in a meaningful way.
3) The Situation
Both situations and experiences affect people’s perceptions. A good perception of the situation brings someone to adapt his behavior to the situation.
If the people have good experiences in doing a kind of prewriting strategy, they will perceive the strategy positively.
4) Person’s Self-concept
Self-concept has the equal meaning to the way a person feels about and sees them. Self-concept is important to determine someone’s mental picture of what their perception about things and what he does. For example: people who have competence in drawing will be more comfortable working with mind mapping by drawing and coloring compared by the opposite people.
2. Writing
Hughey (1983: 33) stated that writing is as a means to learn about the writers and the world about them, as well as an important means to express them.
Zimmerman and Rodrigues (1994: 4) defined writing as a way of thinking, learning and sharing ideas with others. Based on the writer’s opinion, writing is one of the ways, besides speaking, to reveal feeling and thought from a person to others.
Writing is not a simple process to do. To have a good writing or composition a person has to have some steps. This statement supported by Nunan (2003: 88) who said that when students are writing they imagine, organize, draft, edit, read and reread. As what Gerson saw that in writing process, there are three steps to do; those are pre-writing step, writing step and rewriting step (2003: 12).
Refer to the statement by Baskoff, the writing skill which is discussed in this research will focus on how to say and what to say. the first term, how to say, will focus on which or what kind of strategy that they will use in prewriting step which will facilitate them most. The second term, what to say, refers to the selection of ideas and how they are able to explore deeper into interconnection ideas then.
a. Prewriting Step
As cited in http://uwp.aas.duke.edu/wstudio, prewriting is a blanket term for a wide range of techniques to start thinking about our paper before we begin the formal process of writing a draft.
Prewriting is the very first step of the writing processes. There are many ways to have in prewriting step, namely mind mapping, brainstorming and freewriting.
Prewriting step has a purpose to help writers to know what to explore deeper in their composition. In brief words, prewriting helps writers to gain the main topic in their composition.
b. Writing Step
The next step is writing process where the real writing starts. It is usually called drafting. It is the step where the students can write either about their ideas that have been drawn in their mind mapping or some additional points related to the composition. In drafting step, students do not need to worry about the grammatical and the punctuation errors because the students still have the next step to revise the draft.
c. Rewriting Step
The last step in writing process is rewriting step. It is the step where the students can revise the whole draft. The students are also able to check the grammar, the punctuation, and also the content whether each sentence is understood and has relation to other sentences or not.
3. Learning Strategies
Learning strategy is a kind of techniques used by the learners to learn certain subject easily. The learning strategies of individuals are chosen by the learners themselves to help them to learn. As Chamot (quoted by Weden and Rubin, 1987: 71-72) defined “learning strategies as techniques, approaches, and deliberate actions that students take in order to facilitate their learning and recall of both linguistic and content area information.” Another similar thought was stated by Weisten and Mayer (1986: 315) who said that learning strategies can be defined as behaviors and thoughts that a learner engages in during learning and that are intended to influence the learner’s learning process. Oxford added that learning strategies is as an action taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more fun, more self-directed, more effective and more transferable to new situation (1990: 8). Therefore, each learner may employ different learning strategies. They can create some conscious efforts to learn certain subject easily and efficiently. Rubin (1987: 9) adds “learner strategies include any sets of operations, steps, plans, routines, used by the learner
Chamot (quoted by Weden and Rubin, 1987: 71-72) defined that learning strategies in the second language literature can be classified within three general categories, that are, as metacognitive, cognitive and social affective in nature. The following subheadings will clarify the categories of learning strategies according to Chamot.
a. Metacognitive Learning Strategy
The study is also related to metacognitive learning strategy by which the students can choose what kind of learning strategy that can facilitate them to learn easily. Then, learning strategies can also be applied in writing process by which the students choose mind mapping in prewriting step as a means to help in composition. Anderson, as cited in Moving toward Metacognition Journal (Santana, 2003) defines metacognition as the ability to think about your thinking-to make your thinking visible. The statement related when the students choose mind mapping as a means to help them in writing a composition. The further explanation about mind mapping is going to be discussed in this next sub-section.
Metacognitive learning strategies are classified into three aspects, namely, planning, monitoring, and evaluation. As what Oxford (2000: 15) viewed that metacognitive strategies involved about planning the learning, monitoring the learning and evaluating the learning. The three steps of metacognitive strategy had some categories. As Chamot (quoted by Weden and Rubin, 1987: 77) stated that metacognitive learning strategy can be classified into some categories referring to
1) Planning a. Advance Organizer
Learner makes a general but comprehensive preview of the concepts in a learning activity.
b. Directed Attention
Learner decides to generate a learning task and to ignore irrelevant distractions.
c. Selective Attention
Learner decides to attend to specifics aspects of situational details that will refer to the situational details.
d. Self-management
Learner understands the conditions that help the learner and arranges for the existence of those conditions.
e. Advance Preparation
Learner plans and reviews the components necessary to carry out an upcoming language task.
2) Monitoring
Learner corrects for the accuracy of grammar and vocabulary or for the appropriateness related to the setting of its language task.
3) Evaluation
Learner checks the outcomes or results of its language task against an internal measure of completeness and accuracy.
b. Cognitive Learning Strategy
Brown and Palinscar (quoted by Weden and Rubin, 1987: 72) viewed that cognitive learning strategy was more directly related to a specific task and learning objective. This kind of learning strategy involved management or transformation of the materials to be learnt. It meant the learner interacted directly or self-learning with what to be learnt. As Chamot (quoted by Weden and Rubin, 1987: 77) categories that cognitive learning strategies involve repetition, resourcing, directed physical response and translation.
1) Repetition
Repetition is imitating a kind of language learning, including explicit practice and silent rehearsal.
2) Resourcing
Resourcing is defining or expanding a definition of a word or concept through use of target language materials.
3) Directed Physical Response Directed physical response is relating new information to physical actions. 4) Translation
Translation is using the first language as a base for understanding or producing the second language.
c. Social Affective Learning Strategy
As quoted by Weden and Rubin (1987: 72), McDonald et al. (1979) found that students are in social affective learning trained to use cooperative learning.
Therefore, the strategy would be effective on learning tasks in a first language. Chamot studies that social-affective includes two categories. They are cooperation and question for clarification.
1) Cooperation
Cooperation is working with one or more peers to obtain feedback and group information, even a learning strategy or learning activity.
2) Question for Clarification
Question for clarification means that learner asks a teacher or native speaker for repetition, paraphrase, explanation or examples.
4. Mind Mapping
Many kinds of prewriting strategies enable learners in composition. Those statement was supported by Gerson who defined that many prewriting techniques help writers tackle different types of technical correspondence. He also provided some of these prewriting techniques including mind mapping, brainstorming, branching, flowcharting, outlining, storyboarding, and cubing (2003: 14).
In brief, mind mapping is one of the writing strategies used in prewriting step. According to Steel (2005), in her article on Using Mind Maps to Develop Writing, that a mind map, or spidergram, is a strategy for making notes on a topic, prior to writing. Halen (2009) added the statement in his article on Showing the Linkages
from an Issue, Concept or Problem with Other Concepts or Issues , mind mapping is
a popular brainstorming tool and learning technique of visually arranging ideas and their interconnections. In the writer’s conclusion, mind mapping is one of the prewriting strategies enabling students to learn, especially in composition, to find a specific topic in learners’ compositions.
B. Theoretical Framework
The research discusses on two main problems. The first is the students’ perceptions on the use of mind mapping in prewriting step to foster students’ writing skills and the second is the students’ suggestions on the use of mind mapping in its implementation in Writing class.
The research has a relation to the previous study by Torild Homstad and Helga Thorson who studied about writing theory and practice in second language classroom
“support skill” for learning grammar in foreign language instruction” (Homstad & Thorson, 1994: 4). Their research looked beyond traditional writing practices in second language acquisition for new instructional possibilities.
This statement shows that writing is important to second language acquisition thus either teachers or learners should have the effective way to start writing. One of the effective ways is mind mapping. It leads the learners to build up their ideas and arranges them into composition easily.
“Teachers will provide a writing task and help them to generate vocabulary and ideas by applying a number of strategies in class namely brainstorming, clustering, and discussion, without concern for correctness or appropriateness in the first stage of writing.” (adapted from Scott “The model of writing process”, 1996). The statement is equal to the explanation of prewriting step that is the very first step of writing process. It means that there are still other processes or steps in writing. However, the researcher focuses on mind mapping as one of the prewriting strategies in prewriting step.
As what Halen (2009) said on Showing the Linkages from an Issue, Concept or
Problem with Other Concepts or Issues , explained in previous sub-section, the
researcher sees that mind mapping is one of the easier and more interesting strategies to use because it may has some images and colors. Mind mapping also encourages the students to think about the ideas that should be written, and then makes the ideas visualized by drawing the images and coloring the line to relate each idea. Hence, written in previous sub-section, can be concluded that mind mapping which pushes students to have metacognitive learning strategy stimulate students being autonomous in learning. The students are able to arrange their own ideas into composition by previously visualizing the ideas. Mind mapping refers to the metacognitive learning strategy because it has three steps of working. They are, first, planning which refers to the students when they plan of what they are going to write and how they want to explore deeper towards the general ideas of the composition then, the second, monitoring is when they are writing, they are able to monitor they writing by themselves by looking at mind mapping as the guidance, the third, evaluation can be the way to recheck their writing whether all the ideas in the mind mapping have been discussed on the composition or not.
Whereas the meaning of students’ perceptions in this research refers to the definition stated by Hardi and Heyes (1988: 85), “The basic form of perception is people’s born talent, meanwhile perceptional ability is the result of learning which is determined by the environment”. The statement means that the perception is a way of which a man views a phenomenon based on their own experiences toward the phenomenon. The data of students’ perceptions then are going to be gained based on the students’ experiences using mind mapping in pre-writing step.
Those theories that relate to writing skill will support this research to solve the research problems. Some theories have a close correlation to each other and also to this research.
CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY This chapter discusses the methodology used to conduct the research. There will be six main parts, namely, research method, research respondents,
research instruments, data gathering technique, data analysis technique, and research procedures.
A. Research Method
Since the research discussed the students’ perception on using mind mapping as a method to foster students’ writing skill. Therefore, the method which was needed is descriptive research. According to Ary, et. al (2002: 381) “Descriptive research studies are designed to obtain information concerning the current status of phenomena”. To support this research, the researcher conducted survey research. The survey research would involve two major instruments in collecting data. They were distributing questionnaires and interviewing some respondents randomly.
B. Research Respondents