99 EEJ 4 (2) (2014) English Education Journal http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej MIND MAPPING AND EVERYBODY WRITES TECHNIQUES FOR STUDENTS WITH HIGH AND LOW WRITING ACHIEVEMENT Abdul Muhib , Dwi Anggani L.B., Rudi Hartono Prodi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, Program Pascasarjana, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia Info Artikel ________________ Sejarah Artikel: Diterima Oktober 2014 Disetujui Oktober 2014 Dipublikasikan November 2014 ________________ Keywords: Mind Mapping Technique, Everybody Writes Technique, High and Low Writing Achievement ____________________ Abstract ___________________________________________________________________ This research investigated the effectiveness of Mind Mapping and Everybody Writes techniques used for students with high and low writing achievement. The subjects of the study were the seventh graders of State Islamic Junior High School of Slawi Tegal in the academic year of 2013/2014. Two of fifteen classes in the school were selected as the samples of the research.The experiment was set up according to a pretest and posttest for both groups. The experimental research with factorial design 2x2 was used by using technique of multifactor analysis of variance (ANOVA). The finding of this research indicates that Mind Mapping and Everybody Writes techniques are effective and significant for students with high and low writing achievement. Everybody Writes teachnique is more effective than Mind Mapping technique for teaching writing. There is an interaction among writing skill, techniques and students’ achievement. This research finding can be seen from the results of the pretest and posttest that is very significant. © 2014 Universitas Negeri Semarang  Alamat korespondensi: Kampus Unnes Bendan Ngisor, Semarang, 50233 E-mail: pps@unnes.ac.id ISSN 2087-0108 Abdul Muhib, dkk. / English Education Journal 4 (2) (2014) 100 INTRODUCTION As an international language, English is used as a tool of communication all over the world. Budiharso (2004: 4) states that English is the major language which is used by people in some sectors. It is used for obtaining successful jobs, promotions, academic function, and business interactions. Consequently, many people tend to master English to compete in globalization. Therefore, English is taught as the first foreign language as one of the important subjects in Indonesia from secondary to university level. English has four basic skills, namely: listening, speaking, reading and writing practiced and conducted in the classroom. In this case, English teachers must be able to master those basic language skills very well. In relation to writing skill, Harmer (1998: 43) states that writing is a skill that is as important as speaking, listening and reading; however, it is more difficult for students to learn. This skill tends to express the students’ opinions. Ratnasari (2004) as cited by Sa’diyah (2011: 164) claims that writing can be achieved by mastering some techniques of writing, such as how to get ideas to write on, how to express them in a sequence of sentences, how to organize them chronologically and coherently and how to review and then to revise the composition until the writing is well-built. Heaton (1988: 135) states that writing skill is very complex and sometimes it is difficult for teachers to teach. It requires a mastery not only grammatical and rhetorical device but also conceptual and judgmental elements. From the statement above, it means that English students should master written English though they have difficulties in learning this skill. The reason why students still get low achievement in writing is not only from students themselves, but also from teachers. The conventional learning method that teacher applied in teaching writing skill is not effective. Based on the problems above, applying various prewriting techniques, strategies and methods is very crucial. Those ways will lead the students to feel free to express their ideas and thoughts in written form. Buzan (2010: 79) states that the Mind Mapping strategy is one of the teachers’ strategies in teaching. Mind Maps not only shows the facts, but also shows the overall structures of a subject and the relative importance of individual parts. It helps students associate ideas, think creatively, and make connections. Lemov (2010: 139) states that Everybody Writes is a technique in which teachers ask all students to prepare for more ambitious thinking and discussion by reflecting in their writing a short interval. Referring to those explanations above, the researcher intended to conduct a research in writing descriptive textby using the two techniques. In line with the background of the study above, this study attempts to address the following research problems: 1. How effective is writing skill if high writing achievement students were treated by Mind Mapping technique? 2. How effective is writing skill if high writing achievement students were treated by Everybody Writes technique? 3. How significant is writing skill if low writing achievement students were treated by Mind Mapping technique? 4. How significant is writing skill if low achievement writing students were treated by Everybody Writes technique? 5. Which technique is more significant for high and low writing achievement students? 6. Is there any interaction among writing skill, techniques and students’ achievement? In this study, the experimental research was aimed to observe whether there is an interaction among writing skill, techniques and students’ achievement. The techniques used by comparing the experimental group 1 using Mind Mapping and the experimental group 2 using Everybody Writes technique. Each group was divided into two different groups that are high and low writing achievements. This research involved three kinds of variables namely independent variables (Mind Mapping and Abdul Muhib, dkk. / English Education Journal 4 (2) (2014) 101 Everybody Writes techniques), dependent variable (writing skill), and moderator variable (students’ writing achievement). The research design used for the research is factorial design 2 x 2 with multifactor analysis of variance (ANOVA). The population of this research was the seventh grade students of the State Islamic Junior High School of Slawi. The samples of this research were two classes of the seventh graders of State Islamic Junior High School of Slawi. They were selected because the writing of descriptive text was taught at the seventh graders. And then, there are thirteen classesin the school, three classes of fullday class and ten classes of regular class and the other two classes in Pecabean Pangkah. Sugiyono (2009: 8) explains that for simple experimental research which uses experimental and control group, the number of sample is between 10-20 people. But the researcher only took 15 students in every group. There were 15 students treated as high and low writing achievement students. So the samples consist of 30 students. The Concept of Mind Mapping Some people realize that diagram or chart can help them rearrange and visualize the ideas that on their mind. They usually use symbols or pictures that can represent words and ideas to help them remember well. Buzan (2009: 17) explaines that Mind Mapping is a graphic representation of ideas (usually generated via a brainstorming session). It shows the ideas which are generated around a central theme and how they are interlinked. It is a tool primarily used for stimulating thought. He realizes that the education system primarily focuses on the left and brain strength, which includes the use of “language, logic, numbers, sequence, looks at detail, linier, symbolic representation and judgmental characteristics. Alamsyah (2009: 58) states that Mind Mapping is a useful technique that helps you learn more effectively and improves the way of recording information, and supports and enhances creative problem solving. Event Mind Mapping is good for teaching learning, but it has many advantages and disadvantages. Buzan and Buzzan (1995: 9) explain that Mind Map gives advantages than linear note. The advantages of Mind Mapping are: a. The centre of Mind Map (main idea) is defined clearly. b. The level of each idea is shown clearly. The important idea near of the centre and on other hand. c. The relation between keywords can be known quickly because of its relation. It makes the remembering of students more effective. d. Mind Map is seen different with other maps. e. The structure of Mind Map has probably to add the new information. While, the disadvantages of Mind Mapping is that it needs a lot of time in organization, difficulties to allocate the time, need many times to find an effective keyword, too load the students. The Concept of Everybody Writes Department of Children, School and Families (DCSF) (2007: 3) states that Everybody Writes is a technique that encourages a love of writing for all children and increases the confidence of teachers in devising original and creative ways to engage children in writing process. The sentence is also supported by Lemov (2012: 11) that states that Everybody Writes means preparing your students to engage rigorously in classroom discussion by giving them chance to reflect first in writing. So that, from the describing above, Everybody Writes technique is the strategy to give students chance to think critically about their experiences. The Concept of Writing Writing is a complex process consisting of many constituent parts which have to be considered. According to White and Arndt Abdul Muhib, dkk. / English Education Journal 4 (2) (2014) 102 (1997: 1), the writers are able to express ideas and feelings to persuade and convince other people. Heaton (1975: 127) states that in writing, the writers manipulate words in grammatically correct sentences and link those sentences to form a piece of writing which successfully communicates the writers’ thoughts and ideas on a certain topic. In other words, the writers try to express their ideas in written form using grammatically correct sentences for the purpose of communication. From those explanations, the writer concludes that writing is not only transfer ideas to others but also using a sheer energy to complete the writing process itself; thinking the ideas, preparing the outline, transferring the outline into draft, revising the draft, finally proof reading the draft to prepare for the final outline. The fact is the students find it difficult to do so since they have limited skill and mastery as English. The Concept of Descriptive Text According to Henning (1992: 2), “A descriptive text is a text which lists the characteristics of something. Descriptive text is usually also used to help a writer develop an aspect of his or her work, e.g. to create a particular mood, atmosphere or to describe a place so that the readers can create vivid pictures of characters, place, object etc." In description, a writer uses words to paint a picture of something, a person, a scene, or even a feeling. In describing the object, the writer tells the most significant features or attributes, of the “thing” he or she is talking about. Descriptions range from very precise to very creative. In science, descriptions tend to be exact, as when an author describes an apparatus or a particular organism. METHOD Anderson and Arsenault (2005: 94) state that instrument includes test and questionnaire, observation schedules and any other tool used to collect data. In this research, the research instruments used are pretest and posttest. The pretest was employed to both groups as the first step of the study. The purposed was to obtain the data of the students’ writing knowledge and find out that students’ capability of English writing of descriptive texts before and after they received the treatment. The posttest was employed to measure the students’ writing mastery after the treatments. It was employed in both groups; experimental and control group. This was intended to find the differences between students’ score of both groups. The research procedures conducted in this study can be seen as follows: Figure 1. Research Procedures Determining the population and samples Finding and selecting the materials Preparing suitable method Designing lesson plan Preparing media and facilities Doing treatment Analyzing the data and testing hypothesis The result of the study Abdul Muhib, dkk. / English Education Journal 4 (2) (2014) 103 The Data Collection Technique The written test was used to collect the data. The data were taken from the students’ writing. To know the students’ achievement, the researcher got the students’ writing achievement from the English teacher before giving pre-test. In this study the researcher administrated the steps to collect data as follow: a. Pre-Test. The pre-test was given to experimental groups of low and high achievement of writing. b. Treatment (teaching and learning process).The Mind Mapping Technique and Everybody Writes Technique were given to the experimental groups of low and high achievement of writing. c. Post-Test. The post-test was given after the treatment. The Techniques of Data Analysis The techniques of data analysis used in this study are descriptive and inferential analysis. The detail formulation of descriptive analysis (mean, mode, median and standard deviation) will be elaborated below. Mean of the data ̅ ∑ Mode of the data ( ) Median of the data ( 2 ) Standard Deviation of the data √∑ ( ) 1 Inferential analysis used in this research related to the design of the research is multifactor analysis of variance (ANOVA). ANOVA test was used to find out whether the difference between them is significant or not. Normality and homogeneity test must be conducted previously before the ANOVA test. Normality test is conducted in order to know whether the sample distributes normally or not, while homogeneity test is aimed at knowing whether the data are homogeneous or not. Liliefors test is used to examine the normality test. Meanwhile, Barlet test is used to examine the homogeneity test. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS There were seventy nine students who were taken as samples of this study. They were divided into two groups, namely experimental group I and experimental group II. To collect the data, writing test was given to the students. The treatment was applied in the two experimental groups. Experimental group I was treated by Mind Mapping while experimental group II was treated by Everybody Writes technique. The data of this study were obtained after pretest and post test applied in both groups. The data were the students’ scores needed for hypothesis testing. From the data of the experimental group I taught by Mind Mapping, it was found that there were 41 students improved their scores and 9 students did not. The lowest score in the pre test was 45 and the highest was 80. Meanwhile, the lowest score in the posttest was 65 and the highest was 85. On the other hand, the data taken from the experimental groupI showed that 41 students improved their scores and 9 students did not. From the data of the experimental group II which was taught by Everybody Writes technique, there were 37 students improved theirscores and 2 students did not. The lowest score in the pre – test was 40 and thehighest was 75. Meanwhile, the lowest score in the post- test was 60 and thehighest was 90. From the data obtained, it can be seen that Mind Mapping and Everybody Writes technique are effective and significant for students with high and low writing achievement. Because the highest score of posttest is 90 got from the student taught by Everybody Writes technique. Then, it can be also concluded that Everybody Writes technique is more effective and significant than Mind Abdul Muhib, dkk. / English Education Journal 4 (2) (2014) 104 Mapping for teaching writing of descriptive texts. On the other words, there is corelation among teaching methods, achievements and students’ writing skill. CONCLUSIONS The findings of this research are explained as it follows: The first finding indicates that teaching writing of descriptive texts through the use of Mind Mapping for students with high writing achievement is effective because scores from pretest to posttest increased significantly. The second, the teaching writing descriptive texts by using Everybody Writes technique for students with high writing achievement is also effective because their scores of posttest are higher than the pretest. The third, teaching writing descriptive texts by using Mind Mapping for students with low writing achievement based on the the statistical calculations is significant. It can be seen that there is the score from pretest to post test increased significantly. The fourth, teaching writing descriptive texts by using Everybody Writes technique for students with low writing achievement is also significant because their scores of posttest are higher than the pretest. The fifth, the findings show that the highest score of posttest were got from the students taught by using Everybody Writes technique. It can be concluded that for students with high and low writing achievement, teaching writing descriptive text by using Everybody Writes technique is more effective than teaching by using Mind Mapping. The last conclusion is that null hypothesis (Ho) is rejected. It can be concluded that there is an interaction among writing skill, techniques and students’ achievement of the seventh graders of State Islamic Junior High School of Slawi Tegal in the academic year of 2013/2014. The interaction happened because Mind Mapping and Everybody Writes techniques are appropriate techniques for students with high and low writing achievement. And Everybody Writes technique is more effective than Mind Mapping because students taught by using Everybody Writes technique have better writing scores than those who were taught by using Mind Mapping technique. REFERENCES Anderson, Gary and Arsenult, Nancy. 2005. Fundamentals of Educational Research. UK: Routledge. Alamsyah, Maurizal. 2009. 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