The Use of Mind Mapping Technique to Improve the Students’ Speaking Skill at the Seventh Grade of SMP Sabilillah Sampang

By Fujiono

There are four language skills in English that should be mastered by students such as: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Almost people are from many countries and around the world using English to communicate. Speaking is an active process of negotiating meaning and of using social knowledge of the situation, the topic and the other speaker (Burn & Joyce, 1999, p. 14). Speaking is an active or productive skill. The target of speaking skill is an ability to express ideas freely and spontaneously (Fahrurrazy, 2012, p. 79).

Speaking takes place everywhere and has become part of our daily activities, when someone speaks; he or she interests to use the language to express his or her ideas, feeling, and thought. He or she also shares information to other through communication. Speaking is so much a part of daily life that we take it for granted. The average person produces tens of thousands of words a day, although some people like auctioneers or politicians may produce even more than that. So natural and integral is speaking that forget how we once struggled to achieve this ability until, that is, have to learn how to do it all over again in a foreign language. What then is involved in speaking? The first point to emphasize is that speech production takes place in real time and is therefore essentially linear. Words follow words, and phrases follow phrases. Likewise, at the level of utterance (that is to say, the spoken equivalent of sentence), speech is produced utterance by utterance, in response to the word by word and utterance by utterance productions of the person is talking to (interlocutor) (Thornbury, 1988, pp. 1-2).

According to Burns & Joyce (1999, p. 4) argued that a common sense explanation of what happens when people speak to each other is that they “are making conversation”. However, in everyday life we speak for many different kinds of reasons. Some of these reasons are to do with our desire to relate to each other as people, while others have to do with exchanging information or seeking a practical outcome.

On the other hands, there are external and internal factors that influence students to succeed to learn English, especially to acquire speaking. The external factors consist of conditions around the students, for example their family, friends, environment, culture, teaching materials and technique, teachers and curriculum, etc. Whereas the internal factors are factors that come from the students’ themselves, for example the students’ intelligence, interest, motivation, personality, etc.

In the real condition, the students often meet difficulties in speaking, such as inhibition, nothing to say, low or uneven participant, and mother tongue use. according to Burns & Joyce (1999, p. 132) argued that there may be any number of social and cultural factors which account for this situation, the factors accounting for limited English practice outside the classroom may include; lack of contact with native speakers, dependence on other family members who may undertake interactions in English on their behalf, lack of confidence or motivation, previous negative experiences in using English, and cultural factors based on religion, gender or age.

Nowadays, along with the strengthening position of English as a language for international communication, the teaching of speaking skill has become increasingly important in the English as a Second or Foreign language (ESL/EFL) context. The teaching of speaking skill is also important due to the large number of students who want to study English in order to be able to use English for communicative purposes. This is apparent in Richards and Renandya’s (2002, p. 201) publication where they stated, “A large percentage of the world’s language learners study English in order to develop proficiency in speaking”. Moreover, students of second/foreign language education programs are considered successful if they can communicate effectively in the language (Riggenback & Lazaraton, 1991). The new parameter used to determine success in second/foreign language education programs appear to revise the previously-held conviction that students’ success or lack of success in ESL/EFL was judged by the accuracy of the language they produced. Thus, the great number of learners wanting to develop English speaking proficiency and the shift of criteria of learning success from accuracy to fluency and communicative effectiveness signify the teaching of ESL/EFL speaking (Cahyono&Widiati, 2011, p. 29).

To improve the students’ speaking skill , the teacher can choose the better techniques for example individual and group activities. Individual activities such as storytelling, describing things, and public speech are usually transactional, while group activities such as role-plays, paper presentation, debates, small group/panel discussions are interaction (Cahyono & Widiati, 2011, p. 39). And beside that the teacher can be able to control speaking class and using technology to invite the students feel motivated in speaking competence. But, realizing the high importance of speaking skill in English Foreign Language, it is very important to find and use the best instructional methods, materials, activities, media, and other requirements that will help the learners to improve their speaking skill.

The goal of teaching speaking skills is communicative efficiency. Learners should be able to make themselves understood, using their current proficiency to the fullest. They should try to avoid confusion in the message due to faulty pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, and to observe the social and cultural rules that apply in each communication situation (Yunus: 2012, p. 30).

In preliminary study of this research at the seventh grade of SMP SABILILLAH Sampang was which conducted in the beginning of the second semester; on April 19^st 2014, showed that the students’ speaking skill were still under the average of satisfying. It was still under the minimum passing score. And based on interview between the researcher with a teacher and questionnaire stated that the students get difficulty in pronunciation, grammar, vocabularies, and their expression of ideas. 

Therefore, the researcher uses mind mapping to improve the students’ problem in speaking skill because mind-mapping techniques have many advantages, the main benefit is that you use both halves of the brain which makes it easier to remember. Moreover, making mind-map is fun. It is a creative process and a natural way to organize your thoughts. Most of pupils like it because it is not boring. It will also save time because pupil will memorize the subject material much faster so it take less time to teach it to them (Hofland, 2007, p. 30).

Mind-map, invented and copyrighted by Tony Buzan, is a technique of representing information in a visual way by demonstrating connections among key concepts and ideas (Buzan & Buzan, 1993, p. 93). Mind map is widely believed to ease the path towards successful communication of people around the world.

Mind mapping take all these elements into account (Buzan & Buzan, 1993, p. 93). It is proved by the use of curve lines, symbols, words, pictures, and colors in creating a mind mapping. Your brain is naturally attuned to beauty. So, the more beautiful your mind map is, the more you will create and remember from it (Buzan & Buzan 1993: 109). The Mind Map is a multi-dimensional memory jogger and a fantastic revision tool. Understanding the way you think will help you to use words and imagery in Mind Map formats for recording, revising, recalling, remembering, organizing, creative thinking and problem solving in your studies and when revising for exams. You must also be able to store, recall and retrieve information and data effectively  (Buzan, 2006, p. 11).

There are seven steps in creating mind mapping (Buzan, 2005, pp. 15-16) as follows:

1.    Start at the center of the paper and put it horizontally. Why? It does so as starting from the central will provides a free thinking to the way of thinking mind and also follows the natural rule.

2.    Use a picture or photos for the central ideas. Why? The saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” may be a cliché, but it is true. The pictures will help us focus, and activate our brain.

3.    Use colors. Why? Because color is as interesting as pictures for our brain that are able to trigger thinking.

4.    Draw a thick line out from the center and write an idea associated with the topic. Then draw thine lines from the thick line and write ideas associated with it. Continue to map until any more ideas cannot be thought of. 

5.    Use a curve line, not a straight line. Why? Because the straight line will make our brain bored.

6.    Use one word per line. Why? Since each word has an enormous number of associations, and this rule allow each one more freedom to link to other associations in our brain.

7.    Use as many images as possible. Why? As like the center picture, a picture is

     worth a thousand words.

In Ningrum’s research (2012, p. 98) under title “Mind Mapping as Writing Strategy across Gender Differences”. He found that mind-mapping plays a considerable role in enhancing the students’ writing ability. Using mind-mapping will help the students to identify important ideas and shows how these ideas fit together. Furthermore, it also triggers the students’ thinking and understanding of structuring the information needed to develop a paragraph or essay since the structure of mind map will represent the structure of their writing.

            Siriphanich (2010, p. 10) stated in his research under title “Using Mind Mapping Technique to Improve Reading Comprehension Ability of Thai EFL University Students. He found that after teaching mind mapping techniques, the majority of the students improved their reading ability in their post-test mean score was12.15 compared to the pre-test mean score which was 11.17. The post-test mean score was higher than pre-test mean score at the 0.05 level of significance. Most students were satisfied with their own reading comprehension ability (72.4%) and enjoyed to work in groups (45.7%). However, a large number of the students had problems about vocabularies and could not construct sentences to complete the mind maps by themselves (42.9%). So, the purpose of  this study is to examine whether the use of mind mapping technique can improve the students’ speaking skill. It also investigates the students’ attitude towards the use of mind mapping technique.

Comprehending Text Emphasizes on Main Idea, Paraphrase and Visual Learning Style

By Yogo Gandjarwati

Reading comprehension is the act of understanding what you are reading. While the definition can be simply stated the act is not simple to teach, learn or practice. Reading comprehension is an intentional, active, interactive process that occurs before, during and after a person reads a particular piece of writing. Reading comprehension is one of the pillars of the act of reading. When a person reads a text he engages in a complex array of cognitive processes. He is simultaneously using his awareness and understanding of phonemes (individual sound “pieces” in language), phonics (connection between letters and sounds and the relationship between sounds, letters and words) and ability to comprehend or construct meaning from the text. This last component of the act of reading is reading comprehension. It cannot occur independent of the other two elements of the process. At the same time, it is the most difficult and most important of the three, (Roger Farr and Jenny Conner : 2004).

Text comprehension is much more complex and varied that vocabulary knowledge. Readers use many different text comprehension strategies to develop reading comprehension. These include monitoring for understanding, answering and generating questions, summarizing and being aware of and using a text’s structure to aid comprehension. As you can see, reading comprehension is incredibly complex and multifaceted. Because of this, readers do not develop the ability to comprehend texts quickly, easily or independently.

Reading comprehension strategies must be taught over an extended period of time by parents and teachers who have knowledge and experience using them. It might seem that once a child learns to read in the elementary grades he is able to tackle any future text that comes his way. This is not true. Reading comprehension strategies must be refined, practiced and reinforced continually throughout life. Even in the middle grades and high school, parents and teachers need to continue to help their children develop reading comprehension strategies. As their reading materials become more diverse and challenging, children need to learn new tools for comprehending these texts. Content area materials such as textbooks and newspaper, magazine and journal articles pose different reading comprehension challenges for young people and thus require different ccomprehension strategies.

Interpretative comprehension is stimulated by purposes for reading and teacher’s questions which demand thinking and imagination that goes beyond the printed page. The skill consist in: first, reason with information presented to understand the author’s tone, purpose, and attitude; second, infer factual information,  main ideas, comparisons. Cause-effect relationships not explicitly stated in the passage; third, summarization of story content.

The main idea of a passage or reading is the central thought or message. In contrast to the term topic, which refers to the subject under discussion, the term main idea refers to the point or thought being expressed. The difference between atopic and a main idea will become clearer to you if you imagine yourself overhearing a conversation in which your name is repeatedly mentioned. When you ask your friends what they were discussing, they say they were talking about you. At that point, you have the topic but not the main idea. Undoubtedly, you wouldn’t be satisfied until you learned what your friends were saying about this particular topic.

Effective language instructors show students how they can adjust their reading behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and reading purposes. They help students develop a set of reading strategies and match appropriate strategies to each reading situation. Strategies that can help students read more quickly and effectively include: using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions about content and vocabulary and check comprehension; using knowledge of the text type and purpose to make predictions about discourse structure; using knowledge about the author to make predictions about writing style, vocabulary, content  and  paraphrasing: stopping at the end of  a section to check comprehension by restating the information and ideas in the text (Coady,1997, p. 40).

The students’ capability is influenced by their learning style. Most students can learn the same content.  But how they best receive and then perceive that content is determined largely by their individual learning styles.  Simply defined, a student's studying style is the way a student processes, concentrates, internalizes and retain novel and often difficult bits of domain specific content knowledge, usually for testing and examination purposes.  And as is the case with how one best learns information, many of the same elements, emotional, environmental, biological, sociological, and physiological must also be taken into account when studying, (Brown H.D, 1999, p. 27).

Applying LCD Projector is one of visual learning style. By using the facilitythe students more motivated in teaching and learning activity. Students can acquire their lessons better and more interestedly than other ways. The main focus of using of LCD Projector in the classroom was not only to help students to learn more effectively but also to have fun. And also applying LCD Projector can help teacher in explaining material easily, (Denning K. & Leben, 1995, p. 78).

Teacher’s Challenges and Strategies in English Language Teaching (ELT) in Large Class

By Zainollah

English is categorized as international language. It is widely used in various fields, from mass-media to scientific field. English is one of the major language used by many people in the world, it is significant in international relation as means of communications among countries. Today rapid technological development inevitably makes English more and more important. English is used in many aspects of life, such as economic, politic and education. In the field of economic, it is known that English is used in trade; in politic English is used to communicate the idea or the opinion of the people, and in education, it is known that many literature are written in English. Mastering English passively and actively is very significant in today’s civilization.

In Indonesia, English is taught in all formal educational institutions, from elementary school to university. The major purpose of English teaching in Indonesia is to acquire ability in reading, listening, writing, and speaking English. It is proved by the curriculums that applied in school in Indonesia that consist of listening, reading, listening and speaking. Considering the importance of English for job opportunity, many students take an extra English class such as private course; English course to master English well.  English is a second language in where Indonesian people learned it after they mastered their first language. Because of it, many people in Indonesia including students find several problems in mastering it. They consider that English is quite difficult to learn and even they think that it is the most difficult one to master.

The difficulties in mastering English as foreign language may be trigged by various factors. Those could be from the English language its self, or from the learners themselves or obviously from the learning process itself. Obviously the role of the teacher also plays a crucial effect (Nunan, 1993, p. 93). Many people in Indonesia say that English is a complex language because it contains various patterns, the unique spelling and pronunciation or it can be said that English is difficult to spell.

Speaking is one of the objectives in foreign English language teaching in Indonesia, it is to improve students’ speaking skill accurately and fluently. To reach objectives of teaching there are many strategies and various teaching used because most of people think that speaking is the single most important aspect of learning foreign language. Therefore, there are an assumption in the reality that the success of learning English is measured in terms of speaking ability to carry out English conversation in daily activities.

Creating environment conducive for English language teaching is very important because classroom environment can determines the success of teaching and learning especially speaking skill. Mistar (2012, p. 23) argues that creating environment conducive for language teaching and learning is really important. One of the important things to note in creating classroom environment is physical component. The physical components cover class size, seating arrangement, and whiteboard position. It means that class size is one of important components for language teaching and learning.

Ahmadin (2012, p. 13) describes the possible challenges in large classes; it can be in the forms of lack of control, discomfort of both learners and teachers, difficulty of evaluation, and absence of learning. Besides that, Brown lists some challenges concerning English language teaching in large classes. 1) proficiency and ability vary widely across students, 2) individual teacher-students attention is minimized, 3) Student opportunities to speak are lessened, 4) teacher’s feedback on students’ written work is limited. Therefore, English language teaching must consider the size of the class to achieve conducive and effective language teaching.

English language teaching (ELT) in large classes is the reality of education in Indonesia. It is indicated that there are many schools still have been conducting English language teaching in large classes, especially school that does not have enough budget to pay teachers in conducting English language teaching in small classes. Private schools are the most preferred one to select English language teaching in large classes, it is because of poorness of budget and media in conducting teaching and learning many classes.

The concept of large class varies; even there is no quantitative definition concerning large class. It means that there is no specific rule concerning ideal/standard and not ideal class in English language teaching. However, several English practitioners deduce some concepts of large classes. One class ideally consists of 12 students (Brown, 2000). Another one says that ideal class must consist of 20 students (Nolasco and Arthur, 1988). A person who teaches English more than 20 students is challenging and categorized as large class. In some countries, 25 – 30 students per teacher is still categorized as small class. There are many English language teaching in some countries consists of 25 – 30 students. In Pamekasan regency even in Madura Island, most of teachers in school handle 20 – 45 students in every class.

Madrasah AliyahMambaul Ulum Bata – Bata is one of Islamic private school in Pamekasan Madura. This school located in big and popular Islamic Boarding School in Pamekasan Madura, it is Mambaul Ulum Bata – Bata Islamic Boarding School who has millions students (Santri). From the data of pre-study, this school has been conducting teaching and learning in large class for more than 10 years. It means that for 10 years every class consists of 80 – 90 in average. In academic year 2013-2014, the data showed that the maximum class of in every class consists of 91 students from different towns, places and archipelagos in Indonesia.

Therefore, based on the research context presented above, the researcher really interested in studying about the process of English language teaching of Speaking in large class. This study is focus on ‘(1) What are the teacher’s challenges in English language teaching in large class at the first grade of MA Mambaul Ulum Bata-Bata Pamekasan? (2) What are the teacher’s strategies to cope the challenges? By conducting this study the researcher do expect to find the teacher’s challenges or classroom’s challenges and strategies in English language teaching in large class at MA Mambaul Ulum Bata – Bata Palengaan Pamekasan Madura.  By conducting this study, hopefully the challenges and strategies of English language teaching of speaking in large class can be described.

Developing Textbook Focusing on Tenses in Grammar Class at Mahesa Institute Pare Kediri

By Pandi Rais

Learning English in Pare is popular for Indonesian. Pare is called “Kampung Inggris” where English courses are located. The courses provide various kinds of English subjects such as: speaking, listening, writing, translation, pronunciation, and grammar, TOEFL, and IELTS programs. Those are some courses which only focus only on providing grammatical and structure. The other courses provide speaking and pronunciation classes. The various kinds of English subjects are created by the owner of the course. The courses are depending on the market demand. For the example, when the market intends much in speaking classes, so lots of courses will open speaking classes as many as possible. It is happening in peak season in June, July, August and December. These months are mostly holiday. These are most popular months to go to Pare to study English.

Mostly, English courses provide the materials by their own. They specify and classify the materials based on the needs. There isn’t any standardized curriculum or syllabus for courses in Pare. As the example, Mahesa Institute Pare, is one of course in Pare which has their own curriculum and syllabus for their own classes. It is different from the other courses which apply dissimilar curriculum and syllabus. 

Mahesa Institute Pare has many textbooks in each classe. As the example, the textbook of Grammar I, textbook of Grammar II, textbook of Basic Speaking I, textbook of Basic Speaking II, etc. The content of each textbook is designed to fit the users or learners. The textbooks have to be applied in each class by the teacher appropriately to achieve the objective of the textbook. Each textbook has its own objective of the study based on syllabus.

In this research, the researcher observes the grammar classes which consists of the material needed. The research focuses on the topic of tenses. Tenses are mostly taught in grammar classes. It happens not only in Mahesa Institute but also in other courses with different practice and way. The way how the students learn tenses and how they practice tenses in real life communication is the major of the research.

Tenses are closely related to the rules of constructing words into sentence. Constructing words into sentence means the learners have to arrange the correct order of the words into correct grammatical and structure. For the example, the students have to arrange the words Sam, his bike, often, wash in Present Tense. It might be confusing for some learners who haven’t ever learnt English grammar before. They might ask what Present Tense is or they don’t know kinds of parts of speech.  For the other who has ever learnt English grammar before, those words are easy to construct. They might speak fluently “Sam often washes his bike”. By those facts, the research should be conducted to solve the problem.

The researcher has observed the problem that the students face in common classes. The problem which is mostly faced by the students is they have to memorize the formula of the specific tenses. They have to construct the formula at first before speaking on the tenses they want. It causes the problem in speaking fluency. Their fluency will be reduced by the time they have to think the formula on the specific tenses at first.

The other problem which found is the anxiety problem. The students are afraid of making mistakes while they’re trying to produce sentences. They only focus on the grammatical structure to produce sentences at first. Then, they will continue to construct the appropriate tense they want. It could be a hard work for some learners who have low confidence. Furthermore, they feel guilty if they make mistake(s) in their sentences. In this problem, the students need more courage to produce sentences. Regarding the human nature when they speak, they try to deliver what they want to do or what ideas that should be transmitted to other speaker. Many students feel anxious in speaking class (Padmadewi,cited in Cahyono & Widiati, 2011, p. 37). Also as in Padmadewi (cited in Cahyono & Widiati, 2011, p. 37)  found out that students attending a speaking class often felt anxious due to pressure from the speaking tasks which require them to present individually and spontaneously within limited time. In the other related study stated that students kept silent because they lack self-confidence, lack prior knowledge about topics, and because of poor teacher-learner relationship (Tutyandari, as cited in Cahyono & Widiati, 2011, p. 37).

This study is aimed to develop the textbook in learning the 12 tenses. It is hoped to be able to help the students learn English easier. The research focuses on developing instructional and material in learning tenses by their time signals. The arrangement of the sentences will be shaped when the students try to make their own sentences. It happens because teacher has given the sentences and emphasized the sentence on the time signals. So, the students only memorize the time signals.  The separated time and time signals will be shown in the table below.

Table 1. Time Separation in English

Present			Past	Future
Routines	In Progress	Well-done	Past	Future
Present Simple	a.  Present Continuous b. Present Perfect Continuous	Present Perfect	a.  Past simple b. Past Continuous c.  Past Perfect d. Past Perfect Continuous	a.  Future Simple b. Future  Continuous c.   Future Perfect d. Future Perfect Continuous

Table 2. Time Signals in Time Separation

Routines	every… (day, morning, evening, Monday, Saturday,  June, fall, etc.) once / twice……( a day, week, a month, a year, etc.) often, usually, always, sometimes, seldom, rarely, never, at present on Monday, on Tuesday, etc.
In Progress	now, right now, at the moment, at this time,  since…., for..
Well Done	just, already, yet ever, never, recently, lately
Past	… ago, just now last….. (week, month, year, etc.) yesterday…… (morning, afternoon, etc.) in 1990. when / while, after, until, by the end ……..before, a day before, two days before, a week before. before……, before now
Future	tomorrow…(morning, evening, etc.) next… (two days, three days, week, month, year, two years, etc.) tonight, this weekend, the following day, soon, later

In this research, the researcher only provides 12 tenses. It is because the researcher has considered that the other 4 tenses (Past Future, Past Future Continuous, Past Future Perfect, and Past Future Perfect Continuous) are less necessary to discuss. They are occupied much in the function of the other English grammatical structure that is reported speech. This idea is supported by Tomlinson (2011, p. 332), the area of grammar which appears virtually in any syllabus or list of contents and which don’t need to be dealt with is the example of reported speech.