Journal of English Language Teaching http://ojs.ikipmataram.ac.id/index.php/joelt DOI:10.33394/jo-elt.v6i1.2346 Volume 6 Nomor 1, Juni 2019 online: 2548-5865, print: 2355-0309 pp.25-34 25 CONCEPT MAP STRATEGY TO ORGANIZE IDEAS IN WRITING EXPOSITION TEXT Efi Kurniati 1) , Dyah Kusumastuti 2) English Education Department Teacher Training and Education Faculty Universitas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto kurniatiiefi@gmail.com 1) , dyahkusumastuti@ump.ac.id 2) Abstract The purpose of this research was to find out the effectiveness of concept map to organize ideas in writing exposition text. This research was conducted in one senior high school in Purwokerto in academic year 2018/2019. The population was all the eleventh grade students in that school. Researcher used two classes as control group and experimental group. This research used quasi experimental research which was done in November 2019. The instrument of collecting data was tested. The test was done twice which called pre-test and post-test. The type of the test was writing test. T-test formula was used to analyze the data. Based on the computation, t-test result was 3.535 and the t-table was 1.677 at significant level 0.05 with the degree of freedom 48. It showed that t-result was higher than t-table. Based on the research result, it can be concluded that concept map was effective to organize ideas in writing exposition text. Keywords: Concept Map, Organizing Ideas, Exposition Text INTRODUCTION Writing has an important role in the process of learning foreign language. It facilitates learners to share their knowledge using media. As cited by Hyland (2003) in Maholo (2017), writing is a way of sharing personal meanings and it emphasizes the power of the personality to construct someone's view based on certain topic. In the context of education, writing is one aspect that should be measured in the evaluation of the teaching- learning process. According to Harmer (2004), most exams often rely on the students' writing proficiency in order to measure their knowledge. Compared to speaking, writing is more challenging since writing is a process which requires good thinking. As stated by Rao (2007) in Al-Shaer (2014), some researchers believe that good writing is indicative of good thinking. Prior to getting a final product, a writer should get preparation by identifying the issues and finding related ideas as the writing material. The next process is putting all the thought together as the first draft. Editing and evaluating is needed in getting the final product as well. These stress the need for dealing with writing as a process rather than as a product. Clearly, writing is a demanding process. According to Al-Shaer (2014), writing requires a lot of preparation, brainstorming, planning, drafting, editing, and modifying. The preparation before writing includes laying out goals, generating ideas, and organizing information. This preparation contributes in getting a clear and coherent writing. However, the biggest problems come from the difficulty of organizing the ideas to write. Bukhari (2016) stated that the major problems faced by the learners are not to mailto:kurniatiiefi@gmail.com mailto:dyahkusumastuti@ump.ac.id2 26 organize lexis, mechanics, or the production of the grammatical structure but to organize ideas related to the topic of concern. Al-Shaer (2014) suggested that students need more planning and thus more learning strategies and techniques to overcome difficulties and to organize their ideas in a coherent and unified piece of writing. Based on the syllabus of senior high school, writing is one skill that should be mastered by the students. One of writing material which is taught in the eleventh grade is exposition text. The standard competence of teaching exposition text is composing written analytical exposition texts related to actual issues by paying attention to social functions, text structures, and linguistic elements, correctly based on the context. Exposition text is a text which consists of an issue supported with arguments of the writers based on their point of view. The writers may agree or disagree about the issue. When the writers express their arguments, whether they agree or disagree, they produce exposition text. Writing an exposition text is considered as a challenging activity since it consists of many ideas that should be well organized. Consequently, it is necessary to find a strategy that can make organizing ideas easier. One of the strategies that can be used to organize ideas is concept maps. Concept maps are tools for organizing ideas. They usually have three parts namely concepts, arrows, and linking phrases. Based on Novak and Canas (2015) concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between concepts indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts. Concept map is an easy way to achieve very high levels of cognitive performance if the steps of creating the maps are followed completely. On the other hand, constructing concept maps requires repetition and practice to be able to connect one concept to another concept. Review of Literature Writing Writing is a way of sharing personal meanings and it emphasizes the power of the personality to construct someone's view based on certain topic (Hyland, 2003 in Mahalo, 2017). It means that writing is a process of transferring information or ideas of certain topic through written form. It requires cognitive process of relating the information that has been stored in the memory with the information which is gained recently. As stated by Ahangari, 2008 in Al-Shaer 2014, writing is not only viewed as individual's outcome but as a rich set of cognitive, social and cultural activity. Compared to speaking, writing is more difficult because the typical characteristics of writing language are more complex. Writers should consider not only the content of the writing but also the structure of the sentences to produce a meaningful writing. Therefore, writing is stated as a process rather than a product. In line with Al-Shaer (2014), writing is a demanding process which requires a lot of preparation, brainstorming, planning, drafting, editing, and modifying. Based on the explanation above the writer concludes that writing is a process of sharing information though written form. Since it is a process, it requires consistent effort and regular practice to produce a good writing. 27 Exposition Text An exposition is a piece of text that presents one side of an issue. The purpose of the exposition is to persuade the reader or listener by presenting one side of an argument. As stated by Anderson (2003: 126), an exposition text is used to argue a point of view or to persuade the audience to do something. Aderson (2003: 126) explained that the written exposition has three main parts as follows: a. An introductory statement An introductory statement is a statement that gives the author’s point of view and previews the arguments. The author’s point of view is called the thesis of the argument and this is given in the introduction. The introduction can include a preview of the arguments that will follow the next section of the text. A question or emotional statement can be used to get audience attention. b. A series of arguments A series of arguments that aim to convince the audience might also be used to help persuade the audience. A new paragraph is used for each new argument. Each new paragraph begins with a topic sentence that introduces a new argument. After the topic sentence comes details that support the argument. Another way to persuade the audience is using emotive words. c. A conclusion A conclusion functions as the summing up of the arguments. In part, the author restates his/ her point of view. A summary of what has been stated in the section above may be included here. In judging the writing whether it is good or bad, Brown (2001: 335) mentioned six general categories in evaluating students writing, namely: content, organization, discourse, syntax, vocabulary, and mechanic. Meanwhile, there are only three categories which include organizing ideas. The first category is content. Brown (2001: 357) mentioned that a good content of a writing consists of thesis statement, related ideas, development of ideas through personal experience, illustration, facts, and opinion, the use of description, cause/ effect, comparison/ contrast, and a consistent focus. The next category is organization. He stated that a good writing should cover an effective of introduction, logical sequence of ideas, conclusion and appropriate length. The last category is discourse. Discourse includes paragraph unity, transition, discourse makers, and cohesion. Considering the aim of this research, the writer summarized those indicators in each category into five indicators which are point of view, content, unity, cohesion, and organization. Those five aspects have an essential role in organizing ideas as explained in the rest paragraphs below. 1. Point of View At the beginning of the exposition text, the writer should state her/ his point of view related to the topic. Langan (2001:51) stated that the first step in writing is to discover what point that the writer wants to make and to write that point as a single sentence. As 28 stated by Aderson (2003: 128), an argument is started by a thesis statement which is the writer believe of certain issue. The thesis will guide while writing the text. 2. Content After introducing the point of view at the first paragraph, the writer should explain more about the idea mentioned by giving supporting evidence. To ensure that the text will have adequate evidence, the writer should find out the specific reasons or details. Langan (2001: 55) suggested to write down a brief version of the thesis ideas and then work out and jot down the tree points that will support the thesis. The evidence that supports the point in a text often consists of a series of reason followed by examples and details that support the reasons. Based on Langan (2001: 5), supporting evidence in a text can also consist of anecdotes, personal experiences, facts, studies, statistics, and the opinion of expert. 3. Unity Paragraph unity is the most important characteristic of a good paragraph. It defines that all sentences in a paragraph should speak about one single idea or one main subject. That is, the topic sentence, the supporting details, and the concluding sentence should focus on only one idea. In a text, all ideas should relate to the thesis statement which is usually stated at the first sentence in the first paragraph. The rest paragraph should have supporting ideas which are related to the topic in thesis statement. Zemack and Rumisek (2005: 80) suggested one way to keep unity in a text is to edit the outline for ideas that are not relevant to the thesis statement or topic sentence. 4. Coherence A writer of any language tries to arrange his sentences in a way that allows the reader to follow the ideas presented easily. Thus, coherence can be defined as the orderly progression of facts and ideas arranged in a logical sequence. Harmer (2004: 25) argued that coherence is frequently achieved by the way in which a writer sequences information, and it brings the reader back to the issue of genres and text construction. One of the factors in making a paragraph or text coherent is using cohesive devices. Cohesive devices make all supporting sentences stick together in their support of the topic sentence. These cohesive devices include transitions, personal pronouns, the definite article, demonstrative pronouns, and synonyms. These devices can make the sentence link up so that readers are not conscious of gaps. These make the idea flow smoothly in the paragraph. 5. Organization A piece of text consists at least three paragraphs. They are introductions, body paragraph, and conclusion. Zemack and Rumisek (2005:12) stated that the introduction and the conclusion work together to make the topic 29 and the main ideas of the writing clear to the reader. Therefore, an introduction should clearly state the main point at the beginning of the text which is followed by supporting arguments at the rest paragraphs. While the conclusion is the final paragraph which makes a final comment about the main idea. As stated by Langan (2001: 87) a well-organized text, however, also needs a strong introductory paragraph, an effective concluding paragraph, and a good title. A good introductory paragraph plays a role as a plan of development. In this “preview”, the major supporting points for the thesis are listed in the order in which they will be presented. While a good concluding paragraph should remind the reader of the thesis idea and bring the text to a natural and graceful end. Concept Maps Concept maps are tools which have an attempt to represent knowledge visually. According to Novak and Canas (2015), concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles and boxes of some type, and relationships between concepts indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts. Words on the line, referred to as linking words or linking phrases, specify the relationship between the two concepts. Concept maps are typically made by placing a word in a box or oval and using arrows or lines to link it to other words, showing the relationship between these subjects. In order to make good concept maps, Novak and Canas (2015) suggested the steps to construct a concept map as follows: a. Identifying a domain of knowledge The first step is to identify a domain of knowledge that is familiar to the person constructing the maps. This could be an idea, a question or an issue that one is trying to understand. This creates a context that will help to determine the hierarchical structure of the concept map. It is also helpful to select a limited domain of knowledge for the first concept. A good way to define the context for a concept map is to construct a focus question. A focus question is a question that clearly specifies the problem or issues the concept map should have to resolve. It is important to build a concept map that consistently leads back to that question and its answer. b. Identifying the concepts that related with the domain After a domain has been selected, the next step is to record associated concepts. Think about related ideas and list them on the page. This list is also known as a parking lot and usually consists of around 15-25 key concepts. It is called as parking lot because the concepts which have no good connection with the main domain will be not included in the map. The concepts should be described as brief as possible. They are usually one or two words per idea will suffice. 30 O1 X O2 O3 O4 c. Listing the concept from the most the general to the most specific In order to construct the map in hierarchical form, a rank-ordered list should be established from the most general, most inclusive concept, for a particular problem or situation, to the most specific, least general concept. Although this rank order may be only approximate, it helps to begin the process of map construction. d. Constructing the concept map. In this step, all concepts which have been identified should be put on the circle or box. Put the most general ideas on the top to the specific one in order to make a hierarchical fashion. Then identify the linking words that connect the concepts. The linking words will connect one concept to the other concept in the same domain which is called as preposition. Once the direct connections between concepts have been identified, look for crosslinks that link together concepts from different areas or domains. RESEARCH METHOD This study was a quasi-experimental design. Quasi-experimental is a design which it is not possible to randomly assign subjects to groups. The researcher used the existing classrooms as the subject. One type of quasi-experimental design is nonequivalent control group design. This design involved two existing groups which were pretested, administered a treatment, and post-tested. The study has been conducted into two steps: Pre-test and Post-test. The pre- test was given at the first meeting of the research to see the students’ writing ability before doing the treatment, and the post- test was given at the last meeting of the research to find out the result of the treatment given. Based on the design, Gay (2000: 265) shows the nonequivalent control group design in schema below: Note: X : Represents the treatment O1 : Represents the pretest of the experiment group O2 : Represents the posttest of the experiment group O3 : Represents the posttest of the control group O4 : Represents the posttest of the control group Figure 1. Schema of Nonequivalent Control Group Design In this research, there were two classes that were used as the subject of the research. Those were XI IPS 5 as the control group and XI IPS 4 as the experiment group which were the students of MAN N 1 Banyumas academic year 2018/2019. Both XI IPS 5 and XI IPS 4 were chosen based on the consideration that the two classes have almost equal competence. The equal competence could be seen from the last result of English examination. The instrument was a writing test. Writing test was implemented to examine how the students’ achievement and progress on their organizing ideas. The tests included pre-test and post-test. The pre-test was given before the treatment was implemented while the post-test was given 31 after the treatment was implemented. To gain the scores, the researcher used an analytic scoring rubric and the number of written word counting. The rubric was modified from Elk Grove Unified School as follows. Five marking criteria were developed to assess the standard to which each organizing ideas aspect has been achieved. Each organizing ideas aspect has four rating levels of excellent to advanced (5 point), proficient (4 point), basic (3 point), below basic (2 point), and far below basic (1 point). FINDING AND DISCUSSION Based on table 1, it gives an overview of descriptive statistics of all data. It displays the mean marks of the pre- test and post-test marks in the five aspects of organizing ideas for the experimental and control groups. The overall mark of Control group on pre-test was 10.76 while the post-test was 14.78. While in experimental class, the overall mark of pre-test was 9.86 and the post-test was 16.42. Table 1 Descriptive Statistics Aspect Group statistics mean and standard deviation Control Experimental Mean Standard Deviation Mean Standard Deviation Pre-test Post-test Pre-test Post-test Point of View 2.72 3.46 0.74 2.46 3.78 1.32 Content 2.1 3.02 0.92 2 3.24 1.24 Unity 2.06 2.92 0.86 2 3.14 1.14 Cohesion 1.84 2.4 0.56 1.64 3.02 1.38 Organization 2.04 2.98 0.94 1.76 3.24 1.48 Overall Mark 10.76 14.78 4.02 9.86 16.42 6.56 Based on Figure 2, it indicates the mean result of the pre-test and post-test of both experimental and control class. It presented that the mean of the pre-test of the experimental class was 39.44 and the control class was 43.04. Then, the mean of the post-test of the experimental class was 65.68 and the control class was 59.12. The deviation was not too high, it meant that the students’ achievement in both experimental and control class was almost the same. Finally, it could be concluded that the mean of the post-test of the experimental class was higher than the control class. 32 Figure 2. The Mean Result of Pre-test and Post-test The data from the experimental group and the control group also need to be analyzed to find the t-test result based on each aspect of organizing ideas. The result of t-test then had been compared with t- table. Table 2 The Result of T-test for Organizing Ideas Aspects Aspect N t-test result t-table d.f significance Point of View 50 3.918 1.677 48 0.05 Content 50 1.818 1.677 48 0.05 Unity 50 1.481 1.677 48 0.05 Cohesion 50 3.543 1.677 48 0.05 Organization 50 2.268 1.677 48 0.05 The result of this research showed that the experimental group had significant difference than the control group. The post-test result of the experimental group was higher than the post-test result of the control group. The students in the control group were taught by using conventional teaching strategy. Therefore, the students directly wrote an exposition text without organizing ideas using concept map first. The result of the post-test showed that the control group result was lower than the experimental group. Whereas, the students in experimental group was taught by using concept map as learning strategy. They were asked to create a concept map in order to organize ideas prior to write an exposition text. Concept maps helped them to organize ideas because students visualized their ideas on written form. As mentioned by Shakoori, et.al (2017), with the assistance of maps, writers can examine what ideas are missing or irrelevant in their writings themselves. Therefore, they could organize their ideas in the form of maps before writing a piece of text. As a result, the students’ post-test score in experimental group was higher than the control group. One of the students’ concept map from experimental group was shown by the figure below. 0 20 40 60 80 Experimental Class Control Class Pre-test 39,44 43,04 Post-test 65,68 59,12 S co re I n te rv a l Pre-test Post-test 33 Figure 3. Students’ Concept Map By considering to the significant difference and the t-test result, it showed that concept maps had positive effect in organizing idea of writing exposition text. In implementing concept maps, students were asked to collect their ideas which are related with the given topic. In this step, they were free to put any ideas on a list. Later on, they had to connect one idea to another idea by giving a linking word or phrase. Last, they arranged the ideas from the most general until the most specific one as that was showed by figure 4.6. It really helped them to organize their ideas. As stated by Muhammad (2010), using concept map prior to writing helped the students to generate ideas, focus on what is going to be written, plan their writing and organize their knowledge or thoughts. CONCLUSION This study investigated the effectiveness of concept map to organize ideas in writing exposition text. The result showed that the experimental group had higher post-test than the control group. It can be concluded that concept map strategy enhanced the writing abilities of the students of the experimental group more than the students who were taught through the usual teaching strategy. The analysis of the pre-test and post-test results showed a higher degree of improvement in the aspect of organizing ideas namely point of view, content, cohesion, and organization. The result of the students taught through some usual techniques also confirmed the fact that the traditional strategy applied to teach writing to the students may not give fruitful benefits to the students or the teachers. REFERENCES Aderson, M. (2003). Types of English Text. Malaysia: Macmillan education. Al-Shaer, I. M. R. (2014). Employing Concept Mapping as a Pre-writing Strategy to Help EFL Learners Better Generate Argumentative Compositions. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning; Vol. 8, No. 2. Retrieved online at https://www.iasj.net/iasj?func=fullte xt&aId=102284. Brown, D. H. (2001). Teaching by Principle – An Interactive approach https://www.iasj.net/iasj?func=fulltext&aId=102284 https://www.iasj.net/iasj?func=fulltext&aId=102284 34 to language pedagogy. San Frasisco: Addison Wesley Longman Inc. Bukhari, F. S. S. (2016). Mind Mapping Techniques to Enhance EFL Writing Skill. International Journal of Linguistics and Communication. Vol. 4, No. 1. 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