Using Mind Mapping technique to Improve the Students’ Speaking Ability of the Seventh Grade Students at SMP Negeri 3 Kedungwaru Tulungagung in the Academic Year 2011/ 2012.

Key words: Mind Mapping technique, Improve, Speaking Ability In learning English, students should master the four- language skills. There are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Speaking is important skill which the students should master it well. The aim of speaking lesson is to make the students be able to communicate with other persons using English. Based on the interviews with English teacher, the researcher founds the problem. They are, the students still the lowest score in English based on the students’ score, the students had less motivation in teaching and learning process so the most of them dislike to learn English, and also the teaching and learning process tend only to use conventional method especially to speaking. Based on the problems above, the writer conducts a research by using Mind Mapping technique to improve the speaking ability of the seventh grade students at SMP Negeri 3 Kedungwaru Tulungagung in the academic year 2011/ 2012. And the statement of the problem are “ how can mind mapping technique improve the students’ speaking ability of the seventh grade students at SMP Negeri 3 Kedungwaru ?”. The objective of this research was to find out how Mind Mapping technique can improve the students’ speaking ability. In the pre- research, the writer found out that the students rarely speak in English. The students had not actively been involved in speaking practice, so they were not interested in speaking using the target language. The writer focuses on how to increase their speaking habit. In order to solve the problem, the researcher uses Mind Mapping technique in teaching and learning process. The research design used in this study was Classroom Action Research. The researcher decided the criteria of success in this study, which should be at last 75% of the students in the class get the grade higher than the passing grade. The passing grade of SMP Negeri 3 Kedungwaru is 70. The instruments of the research were observation sheet, and questionnaire sheet. The data were collected by using unguided observation, interview, and questionnaire check list. The indicators of the observation were materials, teaching techniques, and teaching learning process. From the analysis of the data, the English teacher of SMP Negeri 3 Kedungwaru Tulungagung applied KTSP Curriculum. The researcher did the Classroom Action Research in two cycles. In the first cycle, the researcher used still pictures maps in teaching speaking using Mind Mapping technique. The researcher asked the students to demonstrate the speaking activity which talk about the picture together with their groups in front of the class. In the second cycle, the researcher used a revised teaching techniques and strategies by using Mini pictures of mind mapping. Beside that, the researcher gives some example of vocabulary and pronunciation to them. The researcher motivated the students’ habit in speaking English by asking them to discuss and present about the mind mapping using mini pictures among their classmates. The researcher controlled the students during the learning process. The students were motivated to speak English and developed their ideas creatively. The result of the action research Cycle I and Cycle II showed that the students speaking ability had improved through the implementation of mind mapping. If it compared to the result of the speaking preliminary-test, it is clearly that the scores Cycle I and Cycle II were higher than the preliminary-test. On prelimanry test,there were 21 students who passed the test, it means that only 53.84% from the whole class. On the first cycle, there were 26 students who passed the test, it means that 66.66% the students were able to speak well. Then the second cycle there were 30 students who passed test, it means that 76.92% of the students were able to speak successfuly. It indicated that the implementation of mind mapping technique at seventh grade was successful. Based on the result of the data, the researcher gave some suggestions for teacher and other researchers who planning to make mind mapping for teaching speaking to creare more creative strategy. The teacher and other researcher can be used mind mapping for references in teaching speaking and for students can make easy to understand material and give motivation for them