Improving The Students’ Ability in Writing Report Genre Through Mind Mapping at Junior High School in South Sumatra Indonesia

Citation : Novalinda, Erna; Riswanto (2016): “Improving The Students’ Ability in Writing Report Genre Through Mind Mapping at Junior High School in South Sumatra Indonesia”, International Journal of Science, p.1-18

In this article, the writer wants to improve students’ writing report genre ability by using mind mapping. The population of this research is IX-5 students of  SMP Negeri 17 Palembang. The total samples are 43 students. The researcher designed this research as classroom action research. There are two cycles in this research which are helped by two English teachers in order to know students’ improvement from each cycle.  

Mostly, in writing skill, students find many difficulties. Therefore, teachers must find the best way to teach writing, since writing is the most difficult skill from 4 skills, and it is still difficult to students. That’s why the researcher wants to apply mind-mapping to students. Mind-mapping can be used in all subjects, means that it also can be applied in language teaching.

In the article, the researcher concentrates in genre, especially in report text. To apply mind-mapping, the first thing that the teacher must do is giving the topic to the students. Second thing is note-making, when the topic has been chosen, the teacher encourages the students to think about it for one or two minutes, and then note the students need to note their ideas. Next is the teacher makes a collective mind map on the board. Then the students change their mind maps into linear format in order to decide the best way to present their points.

Before applying mind-mapping, the researcher did pretest and the result is still below the target. In cycle 1 the result of the test becomes better. They could reach 69.3% of the content, 61.86% of the rhetorical steps, 61.4% for the use of the language. Therefore, the researcher holds the second cycle. In second cycle, the researcher applies the mind mapping optimally. The result shows that there is an improvement. In the second post-test, the students can reach 76.75% on content, 71.16 on rhetorical steps, 66.05% on the language use, and 69.77% on the form of the genre.

In conclusion, the mind mapping is suitable for improving writing report genre, since the result is reaching the target.

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Journal Review of Using the Think-Pair-Share Strategy to Improve Students’ Speaking Ability at Stain Ternate

The think-pair-share strategy is developed by Lyman to provide students to think given topic by enabling them to formulate individual ideas and share these ideas with another student. This strategy was designed to encourage students’ participation in classroom. It is also a cooperative discussion strategy to help students work in group. According to Lyman (1987) to apply this strategy the lecturer asks a question, preferable one demanding analysis, evaluation, or synthesis, and gives students about a minute to think through an appropriate response. Then the students can share their idea as the responses to lecturer’s questions in teaching and learning process. Students then turn to a partner and share their responses with others. During the third step, student’s responses can be shared within a four-person learning team, within a larger group, or with an entire class during a follow-up discussion. The caliber discussion is enhanced by this technique, and all students have an opportunity to learn by reflection and by verbalization (Jones,2006).

Therefore, by considering the advantages of think-pair-share strategy, the researcher thinks that it is very effective if it is implemented in the Islamic Education Department of STAIN Ternate, in order to improve speaking ability of the second semester students at the Islamic Education Department for Islamic studies of STAIN Ternate academic year 2011/2012.

This research was designed in CAR. This research was conducted by the lecturer as a researcher and a collaborator as an observer. If the students’ performance in speaking does not improve or meet the criteria of success in the first cycle, the research will be continued to the second cycle, and so on. But, if the first cycle has met the criteria of success, the action will be stopped.

The first step is planning which is including preparing the strategy, lesson plans, teaching material and media, observation checklist, field notes, scoring guide, and the criteria of success in order to implement think-pair strategy.

The second step is implementing. In this step the students were divided into two groups which is each was asked some questions to be shared with their pairs in terms of Islamic studies and then, presented in front of class. In this step, the whole teaching and learning process was observed by the collaborator by noting the particular events.

The last step is reflecting. In this step the researcher will analyze the data of the research qualitatively or quantitatively depending of the kind of data

There are 2 cycles in this research since the cycle one was unsuccessful because the average score of students was only 74.18. Only sixteen students of students got range score of 65-79 classified as “fair”.  None of students got the lowest classification of “weak” or “unacceptable”, but it doesn’t meant the research was successful. However the cycle 2 was successful, since the students’ average score was 81.68. There were thirteen students whose scores classified as “good” (80-85), 4 students got “fair” classification and three students got “very good classification. None of them got “excellent” (96-100), “weak”(54-64) or “unacceptable”(0-53).

From the result above we can conclude that the lecturer should apply think-pair strategy to the students.

Source : Usman, Abdurrahman Hi (2015) : “Using the Think-Pair-Share Strategy to Improve Students’ Speaking Ability at Stain Ternate”, Journal of Education and Practice, p. 37- 45.