PROJECT PROPOSAL

THE USE OF MIND MAPPING AND TEACHERS’ QUESTIONS

TECHNIQUES TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING ABILITY

(A Classroom Action Research for The Second Grade Students of SMPIT

Nurul Islam Tengaran in Academic Year 2016/2017)

A. Background of the Study

The human life needs a tool to communicate and interact to each

other. Language is one of the ways to communicate with other people.

According to Sapir (1921:8), language is a purely human and non-

instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by

means of a system of voluntarily produced symbol. Language is a set of

common sounds and symbols by which individual communicate. The

function of language is transferring ideas, human’s feeling, or sharing

everything human in human mind. In the world, we know that every

country has different language. To accommodate these facts, human

makes international language to give solution of easiest communication

with people in other countries and one of international language is English.

According to Brown (1980:5), learning language activity is given

to students directly to express their feeling and communicate the feeling,

idea, and thought by using of conventionalized sign, sound, gesture, or

mark having understood meaning. In the teaching learning process, the

teacher is responsible for executing the process. Teaching is n of the

competences of the teachers, and they have to master it. To assist the four
skills (writing, reading, speaking and listening), teacher’s proficiency is

needed to teach by pedagogy, so that the students can understand and the

material being taught. Not only just the teachers who participate in the

process, but also students have participated in it.

Teaching and learning process in the classroom use appropriate

technique that can influence the students’ achievement in learning

language, it means that learning process dominated by the teacher with

speech method and gives a task. When students want to learn English, they

usually face some problems. Some of problems that they face are

pronunciations, vocabularies, and English sentence arrangement. Those

problems make the teachers to be creative in order to help them solve their

problems.

Most English teachers use discussion technique to improve the

students’ speaking ability. However many people think that discussion is

not easy like the teacher thinks. For example, the teacher comes to the

class and says, “Today, we are going to discuss about oil pollution”. What

the students feel? The fact that they are not interesting in the subject, no

relevant knowledge or experience, no motivation, no desire or perceived

need to speak about it and worst of all, a slight panic: “The teacher wants

me to say something and I have not had time to talk”. Hence, as a result

many students say nothing instead of answering the question. In this

condition the teacher should help their students.

Teaching and learning are related and multi-dimensional processes

which both of them affect each other and they are important component in

educational contexts. In the context, teachers and students learn from one
another as they build up an English environment of learning in a class. One

of the reasons that teachers tend to over emphasize coverage over engaged

thinking that they assume that answer can be taught separately from

questions. When a teacher explains about text book exercise to the students

and monitors the students’ progress. Usually teacher asks, “have you

finished yet?” or “have you completed the question at the bottom of the

page?” students surely say, ”no, not yet Sir/Miss” or “yes Sir/Miss” (Lyn

Dawes, 2011). The example above is one of the teacher’s question by

using a textbook, which is answered by Indonesian students with yes or no,

the teacher’s question and the students’ answer, both of them can affect to

the result of English teaching.

Besides that, another technique that is considered to improve

students’ speaking skill ability is Mind Mapping. It is one of techniques

that can solve the students’ problem about English speaking ability.

According to Toni Buzan mind mapping is highly effective way of getting

information in and out of the brain. This method is considered as the

effective technique to be applied in learning and teaching language. The

lines, pictures, and colors which are made by the students selves in mind

mapping can make the students learn the language creatively based on

their imagination. Besides that, students need not prepare long note when

they want to prepare their presentation in speaking. This technique will

help them to understand and memorize the vocabularies easily, so they can

speak English fluently.

 Mind mapping is proved very effective for English learners

especially when they have to present their English speaking. Jack Milner, a

speaker of the presentation workshop and coach suggests that people have

to use mind mapping for their presentation. In his presentation, he always

adds some humor to make the presentation memorable. In his website, he

wrote,”the result is all the matters. However, mind mapping is a way of

getting started, it does work, and perhaps most usefully of all it shows how

far you need to go to get to the bits that make audiences laugh. ”

At the point, learning process gains a role as a mean for negotiation

within the English foreign language setting and the success of negotiation.

Where both of them mainly depend on the quality and quantity of students’

participation to share some information to make the students to speak in

the class is teacher’s job and responsibility to improve students’ speaking

ability. The teachers can promote their communication with the students

by maintaining the teacher’s question technique in order to the students

keep talking English.

From the explanation above, the researcher assumes that applying

mind mapping and teachers’ questions techniques are the exact techniques

to improve students’ speaking ability especially for the students of SMPIT

Nurul Islam Tengaran. Here, speaking ability is a problem that the

students face. They are still shy to practice speaking English. From the

English learning process’ problem in SMPIT Nurul Islam Tengaran, the

writer would like to investigate the students’ speaking mastery by using

mind mapping and teachers’ questions techniques in order in helping them

to solve the problem.

 Based on the problem above, the research would like to make a

research that is entitled “The Use of Mind Mapping and Teachers’

Questions Techniques to Improve Students’ Speaking Ability (A

Classroom Action Research for The Second Grade Students of SMPIT

Nurul Islam Tengaran in Academic Year 2016/2017)”

B. Statement of the Problem Study

The problem that the writer would like to discuss in this study is

formulated in the following questions:

1. How is the procedure of the use of map mapping and teachers’

questions techniques to improve students’ speaking ability for the

second year students of SMP IT Nurul Islam Tengaran?

2. Whether the use of mind mapping and teachers’ questions techniques

improve students’ speaking ability for the second year students of

SMP IT Nurul Islam Tengaran or not?

3. How is the result of the use of mind mapping and teachers’ questions

techniques to improve students’ speaking ability for the second year

students of SMP IT Nurul Islam Tengaran?

C. Objectives of the Study

Generally, the purpose of this research is to increase the students’

achievement in speaking skill. Specifically, the purposes of this research

are get information about:

 1. To find out the achievement of students’ speaking ability for the eighth

grade students of SMPIT Nurul Islam Tengaran in Academic Year

2016/2017.

2. To measure the effectiveness of mind mapping and teachers’ questions

techniques to increase the students’ speaking ability of the eighth grade

of SMPIT Nurul Islam Tengaran in Academic Year 2016/2017.

3. To see the result of the use of mind mapping and teachers’ questions

techniques to improve students’ speaking ability for the second year

students of SMP IT Nurul Islam Tengaran.

D. Limitation of the Study

In order to make this research is more focus, the research limits the

study as follow:

1. The research is limited to speaking ability.

The writer focuses on the study about speaking ability of eighth grade

students of SMPIT Nurul Islam in academic year 2016/2017.

2. The research is carried out to the eighth grade students of SMPIT

Nurul Islam in academic year 2016/2017.

This research subject is the eighth grade students of SMPIT Nurul

Islam in academic year 2016/2017.

3. The research is limited to mind mapping and teachers’ question

techniques.

In this paper, the writer focuses on the study about mind mapping and

teachers’ question techniques applied in teaching activity to build up

students’ speaking mastery.

E. Benefits of The Study

1. Theoretically

The result of this research can be as the supplementary reference in

the teaching development and learning speaking method.

2. Practically

a. For the students

The students can be motivated to learn English creatively,

because they use their imagination, so it is interesting for the

students.

b. For the teacher

This research has benefit for the teachers to know the

effectiveness of the methods that can be applied to improve the

students’ speaking ability. The method that was used in the

research process can be used as the reference for the teacher to

teach English.

c. For the school

If the research is done, the school can take the benefit with

the increase students’ speaking skill. It can be used as the input of

the data and the foundation to take the next action or decide for

teaching and learning processes.

d. For the writer

By doing the research, the writer hopes that he can study

and get more information to identify the problem in students’

speaking ability. Besides that, the writer will get new experience

and knowledge for the future of his life.

F. Definition of the Key Term

1. Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is an expression of radiant thinking and uses line,

symbol, word, and picture based on the set of simple rules and natural

toward the human mind. By using mind map, the list of information

that is so long and boring can be changed into colorful diagram and

make easy to remember (Buzan, 2009:7)

2. Teachers’ Questions

According to Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classroom

which is arranged by Jack C. Ricard (1994), research suggests that

question is one of the most common teaching used by teachers.

Researcher has proposed that questions plays crucial role in

language acquisition:

“They can be used to allow the learner to keep participating in the

discourse and even modify it, so that the language used becomes more

comprehensible and personally relevant”.

3. Speaking Ability

“Speaking is a productive skill that can be directly and empirically

observed, those observations are in variably colored by the accuracy

and effectiveness of a test-takers listening skill, which necessarily

compromises the reliability and validity of an oral production test”.

Brown (2004: 140).

The meaning of skill and ability is similar. But actually they are

different. In bahasa ability means kemampuan, while skill means

 keterampilan. In Oxford dictionary (2011: 1) the word ability means

skill or power.

G. Review of the Previous Research

In this research, the researcher takes two of the previous

researches. The first is the research that had been done by Tika Rahmawati

by the tittle “The Use of Scaffolding Talk Technique to Improve

Students’ Speaking Skill (A Classroom Action Research of The Eighth

Grade Students of MTs Negeri Andong in the Academic Year

2013/2014)”. The objectives of the study are to find out the use of

Scaffolding Talk technique is able to improve the students’ speaking skill

and to find out the result of using Scaffolding Talk technique in speaking

class. Based on the two cycles that had been applied by Tika Rahmawati,

the result of that research is the improvement of the students’ speaking

skill is significant after the students got Scaffolding Talk technique.

The second research report was written by Nur Eka Elfiani, a

student of STAIN Salatiga in 2012, with her research paper entitle”The

Use of Numbered Heads Together Method to Improve Students’

Speaking Skill (A Classroom Action Research of the Second Year

Students of MAN Tengaran Semarang Regencyin the Academic Year

2012/2013)”. In this research, she explained that the implementation of

numbered heads together method can improve students’ speaking English

actively eventhough they still produce ungrammatical utterances. But it

there is significant difference between pre-test and post-test.

 Meanwhile, the research is conducted in order to know of the

effectiveness of mind mapping and teachers’ questions techniques to

increase students’ speaking ability in the eighth grade students of SMPIT

Nurul Islam Tengaran. To find out the effectiveness of mind mapping and

teachers’ questions techniques to increase speaking ability, this research

applies to classroom action research. The objects of this research are two

classes in the eighth grade students of SMPIT Nurul Islam Tengaran by

using purposive sample.

H. Outline of the Graduating Paper

The graduation paper consists of five chapters, each chapter

discusses as follow:

Chapter one is an Introduction. This chapter explains about the

background of the research, problem statement, the objectives of the study,

the limitation of the study, benefits of the study, the definition of the key

terms, review of the previous research and the outline of the research.

Chapter two is Theoretical Framework which discusses about the

definition of mind mapping and teachers’ questions, and speaking ability.

Chapter tree explains about methodology of research that consists

of research methodology, research object, data source, technique of the

data collection and technique of data analysis.

Chapter four explains about the data analysis which has been

collected. This chapter will present the data and the result of the pre-test

and post-test from experimental and comparison group.

 Chapter five is closure that is contained conclusion of the research

and suggestions.

The last part is references and appendices.

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