Improving Students’ Ability In Generating Ideas In The Writing Class Using Mind Map (A Classroom Action Research At The Science 1 Class Of The Second Year Students Of Sma Negeri 1 Sambungmacan, Sragen In The Academic Year Of 2008/2009)

Oleh :
Anis Miftakhul Rokhmah - S89090703 - Sekolah Pascasarjana

The objectives of the research are to: (1) identify whether mind map could improve students’ ability to generate their ideas; and (2) describe how the class situation was when mind map was applied in the writing class. This research is also designed to analyze the strengths and the weaknesses of the implementation of teaching writing using mind map to improve students’ ability in generating ideas. The research was carried out at SMA negeri 1 Sambungmacan, Sragen from January to May 2009. The subject of the research was the students of Science 1 Class. The data were obtained using several techniques including test, collaborative observation, questionnaires, and document. To analyze the quantitative data, the researcher applied a descriptive statistics and to analyze the qualitative data, the researcher applied constant comparative method.The findings of the study show that: (1) the use of mind map in the writing class improves the students’ ability in generating ideas in writing. The improvement of the students’ ability in generating ideas can be seen from: (a) their ability in producing many main ideas; (b) in giving many supporting ideas in their compositions; (c) in minimizing, even eliminating their tendencies to rewrite ideas; (d) in giving appropriate supporting ideas to the main idea; and (e) in using cohesive devices and sign posts. The findings also showed that teaching writing using mind map improved the classroom situation on: (a) resulting a livelier, enjoyable and interesting writing class, (b) making the students active to ask questions and to give opinions, (c) making the teacher be innovative, give more attention to students’ problems, and try to explore students’ potentials.The findings imply that teaching writing using mind map makes the students enjoy doing writing activity. They also improve their writing achievement as showed by their scores. Moreover, some students who got difficulties in sentence structure can eliminate their problem, especially, in constructing noun phrases and in using pronouns and modals in their sentences.