Improving Students’ Writing Skill by Using Mind Mapping. (A Classroom Action Research Conducted at the Eight Grade Students of SMP Negeri Jaten Karanganyar in the Academic Year of 2012/2013)

Siti Karminah. X2210024. Improving Students’ Writing Skill by Using Mind Mapping. (A Classroom Action Research Conducted at the Eight Grade Students of SMP Negeri Jaten Karanganyar in the Academic Year of 2012/2013). A Thesis, Surakarta: Teacher Training and Education Faculty of Sebelas Maret Universitity, Surakarta. 2014. The objectives of this thesis are to identify whether mind mapping technique can improves students’ writing skill or not; and to identify the class climate when mind mapping is implemented in teaching learning process. The action research was conducted from August to September 2012 and was carried out in two cycles. Every cycle consisted of four steps: planning, action, observing and reflecting. The subject of research was 34 students of VIII C in SMP Negeri 1 Jaten Karanganyar. The researcher collected the data using quantitative and qualitative method. The quantitative data were collected by the pre-test and post-test, while qualitative data were collected by observation, fieldnote, questionnaire, diary, and interview. The research findings show that mind mapping technique could improve the students’ writing skill including: (1) provide the supporting details of the idea; (2) write grammatically correct sentences; (3) use appropriate words to make sentences; (4) create well-organized text; (5) use appropriate mechanics to accomplish the purpose of the text. Besides, the improvement of students’ writing skill can be seen from the improvement of pre-test, post-test 1 and post-test 2, that is 52.32, 67.97 and 76.50. The last mean score is higher than minimum requirenment score (KKM) which is 7.00. In addition, the class climate also improve which include: (1) the students were interested in writing class; (2) the students were active in teaching learning process; (3) the students were eager to write; (4) the teaching learning was alive; and (5) the students had good writing habit. Finally, it can be concluded that mind mapping can improve the students’ writing skill and the class climate. Based on such findings as presented above, it is recomended that the teacher use mind mapping as the techniques in teaching writing. Keywords: writing, mind mapping