IMPROVING DESCRIPTIVE WRITING ABILITY THROUGH MIND MAPPING

The study aims to get the effect of the mind mapping on students descriptive writing ability and the process of mind mapping implementation in writing descriptive learning. The research study is qualitative and quantitative research through action research method. The sample was taken by 34 students. The validity of data used credibility, transferability, dependability, and conformability. The process of collecting data used test, observation, and interview. The researcher used Independent sample t-test to analyze the differences of students’ ability before and after using mind mapping. The finding of analysis that mind mapping implementation has increase the students’ motivation of descriptive writing learning. They can make a good imagination in writing. The t-test result is t-stat (5.38) > t-table (1.99). It means that there is a significant difference was found in descriptive writing ability before and after using mind mapping.


Introduction
Teaching English as a foreign language is a challenging task in developing countries in general and in our country in particular.In Iran, it has been included in the curriculum of Iranian schools and universities.Its acquisition can guarantee the availability of opportunities to employment, traveling, higher education, and even better life (Crystal, 1997 in (Akbari, 2015).Therefore, the student must master in language skills.English learning has four skills as listening, speaking, reading and writing.Writing is a part of difficult skills to learn because it needs more imagination.Writing is not only describing something but also as a social and cultural phenomenon.Nation (2009, p.113) says that writing is an activity that can usefully be prepared for my work in the other skills of listening, speaking and reading.This preparation can make it possible for words that have been used receptively to come into productive use.Writing is an expression of a person to something though.A person unable to write a variety of matters related to the field of scientific other.In some research stated that writing needs analogy to describe writing (Klein, Piacente-Cimini, & Williams, 2007).
English writing refers to expressing everything that has been thought by everyone.
Writing in the learning of languages second only an opportunity to be able to write and revise.Facilities for students to learn to write closely connected with the matter who is learned.Sokolik in Linse (2005, p.98), writing is a combination of process and product.
The process refers to the act of gathering ideas and working with them until they are presented in a manner that is polished and comprehensible to readers, like as descriptive writing.Sova (2004, p.82), description is another common technique in conversation, and writers find that it is also a useful pattern of organization.
It can be concluded that descriptive writing is a process of mental activity that describes something or someone or place which covers readers' imagination when they read it.Thus, reading support students' critical writing.In Ataç research found that the students usually have a positive opinion about the relationship between critical thinking skills, critical writing and advanced reading and writing instruction (Ataç, 2015).To assess the writing, it needs a component of assessment.Smith and Heaton in line with Brown and Barley in Brown (2003) that there are five components to construct writing; (1) organization (introduction, body and conclusion), (2) logical development of ideas, (3) grammar, (4) punctuation, spelling, and mechanics, and (5) styles and quality of expression.While according to Heaton, there are five components in the assessment of writing; language use, mechanical skill, treatment of content, stylistic, and judgment skills.McNamara in Weigle (2002, p.109) notes, the scale that is used in assessing performance tasks such as writing test represents, implicitly or explicitly, the theoretical basis upon which the test is founded; that is, it embodies the test (or scale) developer's notion of what skills or abilities are being measured by the test.In the composition literature, three main types of rating scales are discussed: primary trait scale, holistic scales, and analytic scales.
In contrast, university education exists to build on that foundation with a view to further developing your intellect and powers of analysis, your specialist knowledge of the subject you have chosen to study and your ability to play a role in taking forward that field of study through your own ideas and creativity.This shift of emphasis as you move from high school to university is reflected in the expectations tutors have of your writing.Thus, the writing process refers to process understanding of meaning.In University, the students have to create the writing.Not only writing but also how to analyze the writing is to be a new writing.Because they have to leads their intellectual development and make a scientific writing.But some students are still confusing to write.The problem has observed an English class at UIN Mataram is lower students' ability in writing, especially descriptive writing.Some problems are 1) the students cannot write the abstract in the final paper, 2) the students still confused to write topic sentences, 3) the students cannot make a good paragraph, 4) the students cannot relate supporting sentences with the topic sentences, and 5) the students are low imagination in writing.The last problem is a crucial problem in descriptive writing.Because their writing does not have sense and the reader is not interested.In this case, the students do not know about audience context.While, it has the important role.An audience is central to the rhetorical context and helps to identify the parameters of a writing task (Cho & Choi, 2018).
The overall identified writing constraints needs a new solution to make descriptive writing is more interesting.One of them is mind mapping.Hornby (1995, p.425) said that technique is a method of doing something expertly or needs skill.Mind mapping is an effective visual way to connect and organize our thoughts because it conducts the colour, picture/symbol, and association.Davies (2011) states that mind mapping allows students to imagine and explore associations between concepts; concept mapping allows students to understand the relationships between concepts and hence understand those concepts themselves and the domain to which they belong.It is the same with Windura's opinion (2013, p.12) that delineates mind map as the system of study and thought which uses both sides of the brain, process, potential and capacity of the brain, think, and visual.It also requires a map with the central theme at the centre and supporting ideas around it.By using a mind map, students can produce oral language in a coherent, cohesive, clear, organized, and memorable way, because its advantages are to describe, compare, classify, make a sequence, and make a decision.It also allows them to expand their vocabulary and associate new and old words to images that help to convey meaning easily in a specific context.
They notice that mind maps use images, words, and arrows to show the relations.They are placed in the graphic in a specific way.Then, the students need to follow relations in order to read and talk about them.By using this way, students become creators that inspire and help others to keep on creating.It can be done by making groups of work.
They can amplify and create waves each other.As the result, students compare their work and evaluate themselves with their classmates.Consequently, they do not only study about the lesson, but also increase their knowledge in a community that learn together and help each other.This way help the students is to write based on the bubbles in the graph or else.Thus, the main purposes the study is to solve the problem in descriptive writing learning.
The main problem of this study is the effect of mind mapping on descriptive writing ability.This is the detail of problems: how is the difference of the descriptive writing ability of the students before and after the implementation of mind mapping?

Research Method
The research study used qualitative and quantitative research using action research method.It measured the process and result of the learning.The action declared successful if the students' activity in the learning process with mind mapping achieved good category marked at least reaches an average score of 75.So, the action stopped.In this action, pre-test and post-test results were used in order to decide on the effectiveness of the independent variable.The participant of research consisted of a total of 34 students from UIN Mataram in 2015-2016 academic years.The process of collecting data used observation and tests.The validity of the study used credibility, transferability, dependability, and conformability.The independent t-test technique was implemented to know the difference between students' descriptive writing ability before and after application of mind mapping.

Findings and Discussions
Mind mapping technique applied in descriptive writing ability learning, so that students could practice, improve, and increase their skill.Mind mapping technique created students creativeness and imagination in learning English, especially in writing.
Students have learning descriptive writing ability without the mind mapping implementation get the average score 68.2 and the students have studied using mind mapping get the average score 81.4.It shows that the mind mapping technique has an effect on each other.Here is the t-test result for descriptive writing ability: From the teacher's experience during this research, the teacher found that students difficult to describe something orally because the students still can not visualize their ideas.Therefore in this research mind mapping was introduced as a preparation technique that students could use to plan their ideas.Moreover, the mind mapping technique was implemented in order to draw students' attention to the importance of planning and organizing their ideas.The implementation of the technique was conducted within three times meeting and was examined their use of the mind mapping technique as a tool to plan their writing.
When students use mind mapping in conveying what they are going to describe something.They can use their brain and reflects visually on a piece of paper what happened internally in their brain when they study and think.Students can write down in some of the branches then divided each branch into specific words.The students felt excited in using mind map because it used a variation of colour and it may use a picture in writing and also when they want to speak, this mind maps can help them be brave.
There is some disadvantage of using mind mapping technique in the class, such as; the students still can not manage their time to make good mind maps, then students and teacher also need more time to practices their descriptive writing skill in using mind maps.Some students are able to understand easily but some of them are difficult to understand, the teacher and students need to be concentrate during making the mind maps, like as previous research (Buran & Filyukov, 2015).
Evaluation phase is aimed to evaluate the data that have been collected to determine whether the action is successful or not.It is necessary for evaluation to hold next lesson plan needs to be accomplished.This phase needs to know some problems in the classroom that occurred during the action phase.When the writer teaches descriptive writing, the teacher makes an evaluation as long as a teaching-learning activity.Teacher gives pre-test for students to write the text, in fact, there are several problems that faced by a teacher in applying the material lesson.students are rather confused to make a mind map and difficult to reflects their ideas.So, it needs the harmony thinking and visualizes, as brain, mind and education (Butler-Kisber, 2011).But the teacher has the initiative to make a group discussion to finish the mind map.Students felt easy to develop their ideas and do some exercises in post-test.Before describing something using mind mapping technique that applied by the teacher, in pre-test the students find troubles and their score is low.Teacher initiative with the situation and think about the mind mapping technique and the score of students better and the goals of the study was achieved that students capable to describe using mind mapping technique easily.
In other situation, the students were still confused about the technique and the students also did not understand how to use the technique.The writer still needs others attractive ways to attract the students to the study the descriptive writing skill using mind mapping technique.It is related to the mind mapping technique that the students can not directly write down the ideas using this technique only once, but it needs more practices to develop their ideas.It showed by the students only can describe a few topics easily and not from all topic that given in the class.
Finally, using mind mapping technique to describe something is very useful and make the teacher easier to apply the lesson.Because students trained how to reflects what they think in a piece of paper and it can not make a limitation from their ideas.the ideas appear from their own minds and also improve their descriptive writing skill in front of students' classmate.It has a significant influence on students' ability.There are much research that has proven it, like as (Merchie & Van Keer, 2016).

Conclusion
Mind mapping is one of the appropriate techniques to improve students' descriptive writing skill in order to be active students and able to describe something orally.Mind maps also provide teachers with insight into their students' thought process regarding a specific topic.The disadvantage in using mind mapping technique is students and teacher need more time to practice their skill in making mind maps.
It is indicated that students learn well when they are personally involved in the teachinglearning process.Through the mind mapping technique, students can develop their mind and also makes students creative in finding the ideas.The implementation of the mind mapping technique in UIN Mataram can be concluded that the mind mapping technique can improve students' descriptive writing ability.Moreover, the mind mapping technique would be an alternative strategy in teaching descriptive writing.It can be proved from the fact.It means that the mind mapping technique has influenced teaching for improving descriptive writing skill.Mind mapping technique gave students more opportunity to express their ideas, besides that the students feel enjoy in learning descriptive writing skill.The benefit of using mind mapping technique in descriptive writing skill for students at UIN Mataram can help them to practice their confidence in front of their classmate.

Table 1 .
The difference between the pre-test and post-test score