MIND MAPPING AND BRAINSTORMING STRATEGIES IN

STUDENTS’ WRITING WITH HIGH AND LOW INTEREST

Ernidawati, Warsono, Djoko Sutopo
Prodi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, Program Pascasarjana, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia
ernidanindya@yahoo.com

Abstract

This research is aimed to analyze the effectiveness of Mind Mapping and

Brainstorming Strategies in teaching writing hortatory exposition text to students
with high and low interest. The subject of the study were the eleventh graders of
SMK Kesehatan Darussalam Semarang in the academic year of 2016/2017. Two
of nine classes in the school were chosen as the samples of the study. This study
used experimental research design with factorial design 2x2. The researcher
collected and analyzed the data by using questionnaire and writing test. The
finding of this research indicates that mind mapping and brainstorming strategies
are effective in teaching writing to the students with high and low interest. The
result showed that the score of mind mapping strategy is higher than
brainstorming strategy. It can be concluded that mind mapping strategy is more
effective than brainstorming strategy and there is no interaction among the
strategies, writing skill, and interest. It is hoped that the students and the teacher
can use those strategies in teaching and learning process.

Keywords: Writing, Mind Mapping, Brainstorming, Interest

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis efektifitas Strategi Mind Mapping

dan Brainstorming dalam pengajaran penulisan hortatory exposition text kepada
siswa dengan minat tinggi dan rendah. Subjek penelitian adalah siswa kelas XI
SMK Kesehatan Darussalam Semarang pada tahun ajaran 2016/2017. Dua dari
sembilan kelas di sekolah dipilih sebagai sampel penelitian. Penelitian ini
menggunakan desain penelitian eksperimental dengan desain faktorial 2x2.
Peneliti mengumpulkan dan menganalisis data dengan menggunakan kuesioner
dan tes tulis. Hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa strategi mind
mapping dan brainstorming efektif dalam pengajaran menulis kepada siswa
dengan minat tinggi dan rendah. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa skor
strategi mind mapping lebih tinggi daripada strategi brainstorming. Dapat
disimpulkan bahwa strategi mind mapping lebih efektif daripada strategi
brainstorming dan tidak ada interaksi antara strategi, keterampilan menulis, dan
minat. Diharapkan para siswa dan guru dapat menggunakan strategi tersebut
dalam proses belajar mengajar.

Kata kunci: menulis, mind mapping, brainstorming, minat

Introduction

English is one of the languages which is used by people to communicate with

another. Although English is not the language with the largest number of native language
speakers, it becomes a lingua franca. Harmer (2001:16) defines a lingua franca as a
language widely adopted for communication between two speakers whose native language
are different from each other’s and where one or both speakers are using it as a second
language. English is used in many aspects such as economics, entertainment, law, medicine,
education, and so on. However English has become the most studied foreign language
today.
There are four basic skills taught in teaching and learning process of English. They are
speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Writing is one of the basic skills which has to be
learned by the students. Harmer (1998:79) says that “By far the most important reason for
teaching writing, of course, is that it is a basic language skill, just as important as speaking,
listening, and reading”. It means that writing is one of basic language skills which is
important to be learned by the students.
Writing is a difficult skill for second language learners to master. Based on Richards
& Renandya (2002:313), “the difficulty lies not only in generating and organizing ideas but
also in translating these ideas into readable text.” So, the writers should pay attention to
higher level skills of planning and organizing as well as lower level skills of spelling,
punctuation, word choice, and so on.
Based on the observation, only some of them passed the minimum score (KKM =
Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimal) for English lesson which is 70. It is because of some
problems which can be divided into two. First, is writing skill: (1) writing ungrammatical
sentence, (2) incorrect vocabulary in a sentence, (3) incomplete content, and (4)
Inappropriate order of paragraph. The second is class condition: (1) unmotivated students. It
means that students have low motivation in learning English. It can be seen when the
teacher gave some explanation about the material, they looked like bored and then (2) less
participation during a learning process. The students were busy with their own business like
playing their mobile phone or chatting with their friends.
Based on the problems above, applying the appropriate strategies in language learning
becomes very needed. Those ways will lead the students to feel free to express their ideas
and thoughts in written form. Teaching strategy may well stand for the plans, means and
specific way especially devised and employed by the teachers for guiding, directing and
showing the path to the learners for the realization of the set instructional or teaching
learning objectives. Based on the background of the study above, this study attempts to
address the following research problems:
1. How effective is mind mapping strategy to teach writing to the students with high
interest?
2. How effective is mind mapping strategy to teach writing to the students with low
interest?
3. How effective is brainstorming strategy to teach writing to the students with high
interest?
4. How effective is brainstorming strategy to teach writing to the students with low
interest?
5. How significant is the difference between mind mapping and brainstorming strategies to
teach writing to the students with high interest?
6. How significant is the difference between mind mapping and brainstorming strategies to
teach writing to the students with the low interest?
7. How are the interactions among mind mapping, brainstorming strategies and students
interest to teach writing to the students?

The objectives of the study are to show the effectiveness of mind mapping strategy to
teach to the students with high interest, to show the effectiveness of mind mapping strategy
to teach writing to the students with low interest, to describe the effectiveness of
brainstorming to teach writing to the students with high interest, to describe the
effectiveness of brainstorming to teach writing to the students with low interest, to explain
the significant difference in effectiveness between mind mapping and brainstorming
strategies to teach writing to the students with high, to explain the significant difference in
effectiveness between mind mapping and brainstorming strategies to teach writing to the
students with low interest, to explain the interactions among mind mapping, brainstorming
strategies and students interest to teach writing to the students.
According to Buzan (in Riswanto and Putra, 2012:62), 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 realized that the education system primarily
focused on the left and brain strength, which include the use of language, logic, numbers,
sequence, looks at detail, linear, symbolic representation and judgemental characteristics. It
is hoped that mind mapping strategy can be implemented in teaching and learning writing by
the students and the teacher.

METHOD
The research design of this research uses experimental research design with a factorial
design in which there is one dependent variable, two independent variables, and moderator
variable. Two independent variables are mind mapping strategy and brainstorming strategy.
While dependent variable is writing skill and the moderate variable is students’ interest.
According to Brown (2001:94), an experiment is a process or study that result in the
collection of the data. The result of experiments is not known in advance. Usually, statistical
experiments are conducted in situations in which researcher can manipulate the conditions
of the experiment and control the factors. The subject of the study is the students of SMK
Kesehatan Darussalam, while the object of the study is the students’ writing skill. In this
research, the researcher uses observation checklist, test, and questionnaire to collect the
data. Observation checklist is used in order to observe the condition of teaching and learning
process in the class. The test is used in order to get the data of writing. While the
questionnaire is used in order to get the data about students’ interest. The method of
collecting data in this research, the researcher will use written test. The test will be used to
collect data of students’ writing skill and to know the students’achievement. The method of
analyzing the data in this research are descriptive analysis and inferential analysis. The
researcher will use multifactor Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). ANOVA test is used to find
out whether the difference between them is significant or not. It is calculated by using SPSS
version 22.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

After dividing the class into two groups, experiment class one and experiment class
two, the students got the pre-test. In here the pre-test was used to determine whether the
writing ability of both classes was the same. The students also should answer the
questionnaire in order to know their level of interest in learning English. Then, the pre-test
was given to experiment class one and experiment class two. It was used to know whether
their ability in writing was the same level or not. After that, the score of pre-test was
calculated by using the statistical calculation in order to know the homogeneity and the
normality. The data showed that the significant value of pre-test score in experimental class
one was higher than 0.05(1.000 and 0.846 > 0.05). In experiment class two the significant
value was also higher than 0.05 (0.496 and 0.140). So it can be concluded that all the data
was distributed normally. From the post-test, it can be seen that the significant value of
experiment class one was higher than 0.05(0.965 and 0.916 > 0.05). In experiment class
two, the significant value is also higher than 0.05 (0.998 and 0.835 > 0.05). It means that the
data was normally distributed.
 The Levene statistic value of pretest was 2.746 and the significant value was 0.105.
The significant value was more than 0.05 (0.105>0.05). It means that the data in the pre-test
is homogeny. While in the post-test, the Levene value was 0.611, and the significant value
was 0.263 (0.263 > 0.05). It can be concluded that the data is homogeny. From the Levene
statistic value of pretest and posttest, the variance of the data showed that the characteristics
were homogeny. The P-value from both pretest and posttest were > 0.05. So it can be
concluded that the variance of the classes was homogeny. Because all the data was normal
and homogeny, so the instruments were appropriate to be given to the students.
The research results reveal that the mind mapping strategy is effective to use in
teaching writing to high-interest students. It is proven from the results that showed the mean
score of post test in the experiment class one with high interest (81.00) was higher than the
pretest of the experiment class one with high interest (65.41). From the table of paired
samples t-test, it can be seen that the significant value was 0.000. it was < α (0.05). It means
that it is significantly different from using mind mapping to teach writing with a high
interest in the experiment class one.
Based on the results, mind mapping strategy was also effective to use in teaching
writing to students with low interest. The score of pretest in experiment class one of the
students with low interest (55.26) was lower than the score of post test (71.50). It means that
there is an improvement from the pretest score to posttest score. ). So it can be concluded
that there is a significant result of using mind mapping strategy in teaching writing to low-
interest students in experiment class one.
The mean of post-test of students with high-interest by using brainstorming strategy is
(77.61). It was higher than that of the pre-test. the significant value was 0.000. It was < α. It
means that there was a significant result of using brainstorming strategy to teach writing to
the students with high interest.
The mean score of pre-test of students with low interest by using brainstorming
strategy is (55.57). It was lower than that of posttest. The significant value was less than α
(0.000 < 0.05). It means that there was a significant result of using brainstorming strategy to
teach writing to the students with low interest.
The mean score of experiment class one of the students with the high-interest (80.83)
was higher than the mean score of experiment class two of students with high-interest
(77.33). It means that mind mapping strategy is more effective to use in teaching writing to
the students with high interest.
The mean score of experiment class one of the students with low interest (71.23) was
also higher than that of experiment class two of students with low interest (69.30). It means
that mind mapping strategy is more effective than brainstorming to use in teaching writing
to the students with low interest.

85
80.83
80 77.33
75 71.24
69.31 High Interest
70
Low Interest
65
60
Experiment Experiment
class one class two

Chart 1. The Mean Score of High and Low-Interest Students in Experiment Class One
and Experiment Class Two
 There is no interaction among the strategies, students’ interest, and writing skill. In
here the researcher used ANOVA to analyze the result of the interaction among the
strategies, students’ interest, and writing skill. From the calculation, the significant value
was higher than 0.05 (0.612 > 0.05). It means that there is no interaction among the
strategies, students’ interest, and writing skill. Mind mapping strategy is more effective than
brainstorming strategy to both of high and low-interest students, but it does not depend on
the level of interest.

CONCLUSIONS
Based on the results above, it can be concluded as follows: The first result indicated
that there was a significant difference in the mean score between pre-test and post-test of
high-interest students taught by mind mapping strategy. The result is the mind mapping
strategy is effective to use in teaching writing to the students with high interest.
The second result indicated that there was a significant difference in the mean score
between the pre-test of experiment class one with low interest and the post test of
experiment class one with low interest. It means that mind mapping strategy is effective to
use in teaching writing to the students with low interest
The third result showed that there was a significant difference in the mean score
between the pre-test of experiment class two of students with high interest and that of the
post-test. It means that brainstorming strategy is effective to use in teaching writing to the
students with high interest.
The fourth result explained that there was a significant difference in the mean score
between the pre-test of the experiment class two of students with low interest and that of the
post-test. It means that the brainstorming is effective to use in teaching writing to the
students with low interest.
Answering the fifth question, there was a significant difference in the effectiveness of
mind mapping strategy and brainstorming strategy to teach writing to the students with high
interest. It can be seen from the mean score of the students in experiment class one with
high interest which was higher than that experiment class two. It means that mind mapping
is more effective than brainstorming strategy to use in teaching writing to the students with
high interest.
While the sixth result explained that there was a significant difference in effectiveness
between mind mapping strategy and brainstorming strategy to teach writing to the students
with low interest. The mean score of experiment class one of the students with low interest
was higher than that of experiment class two. It means that mind mapping was also more
effective than brainstorming strategy in teaching writing to the students with low interest.
The last result showed that there was no interaction among the strategies, students’
interest and the writing skill. Mind mapping strategy is better for both of high and low-
interest students. It means that mind mapping strategy is more effective than brainstorming
strategy, but it does not depend on the level of students interest.
From the whole results, this research has proven that mind mapping strategy and
brainstorming strategy can help the students in writing skill for both students with High and
low interest.

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