This document provides background information on a study about using mind mapping technique to teach reading comprehension to eighth grade students in Indonesia. It discusses how English is an important international language and the importance of reading skills. It notes that students at the school struggle with reading comprehension in English. The study aims to investigate how mind mapping technique can improve students' reading comprehension, specifically of narrative texts. It defines key terms and concepts and outlines the significance, research questions, objectives and limitations of the study.

1. CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of The Study
English as an international language has a very important role as the
language of science, technology and international communication. It is crucial
to be mastered lately since any other languages in the world. English is not the
language with the largest number of native or first language speakers. It has
become a lingua franca, it can be defined as a language widely adopted for
communication between two speakers whose native language different from
each other and where one or both speakers are using it as a second language.1
Thus based on it is crucial function in this new world era, the students have to
study English as well as possible.
English teaching is aimed to develop spoken and written
communication capability which is reflected in four skills. There are skills
enable students to take part in information exchange, to establish interpersonal
relationship and to obtain knowledge as to enjoy study language of English.
English is the most popular foreign language in Indonesia, it is the first foreign
language learnt by Indonesian students at school, especially because it is one
of the compulsory subject.
There are four skills in English, they are listening, reading, speaking,
and writing. Those skills are important to be mastered without ignoring each
other. For many students, reading is the most important of the four skills in
second language. As a skill, reading is clearly one of the most important
language skill that where students have to read English material for their
subject. The student often thought to be easier to obtain information from
written text by reading.2
It means that, reading is one of the ways that students
have to master to understand the English written text when they read English
1Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Teaching, (Malaysia: Longman, 2002), 3rd
ed,
p.1
2Jo Mc Donough and Christopher Shaw, Material and Methods in ELT: A Teacher Guide
(UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 2nd
ed, p. 89.
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2. text, students must have not only grammatical knowledge and sufficient
vocabulary but also effective and efficient reading skill.3
In Indonesia, English becomes one of school subject. It has been
introduced begun from playgroup, elementary school, junior high school,
senior high school and university. However, English is not our own language,
everyone will feel that it is difficult. In junior high school, students learnt the
four language skills. That is clearly stated in the goals of the curriculum 2004
as follows the objectives of English teaching in Junior high school is to enable
the students to develop English skills but especially emphasis is given to
reading.4
In reading English text is not always easy for students, it seems that
many students still find difficulties in understanding materials in their
textbooks. It means that L2 reading ability, particularly with English as the L2,
is already great demand as English continuous spread, not only as a global
language but also the language of science, technology, and advanced research.
But reading proficiency in L2 does not develop as completely or easily as it
does in one’s first language (L1).5
It is different from reading an Indonesian
text because in reading English text students need to use their perception and
cognitive abilities.
The success of teaching and learning process depends on several
factors, namely teacher, learner and the technique which are used in teaching
learning process. The most important thing in teaching learning process is
teaching technique. Concerning from the problem above the teacher should
use some techniques to make the learners comprehend more about the material
which the teacher explains and will make students enjoy and easy to read and
understand a text.
3Adi Sutrisno, Langkah-Langkah Taktis Mempersiapkan TOEFL, (Yogyakarta: Adi Cita
Karya Nusa, 2003), P. 126
4Depdiknas, Kurikulum Standar Kompetensi Bahasa Inggris SMP, (Jakarta: Diknas,
2004), p. 13
5 William Grabe and Fredricka L. Stoller, Teaching and Researching Reading (England:
Pearson Education, 2002), p. 2.
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3. In Junior High School improving comprehension in reading is not easy.
In fact, students of eight grade in MTs I’anatut Thalibin Pati the problem faced
by the students is low comprehension and limited vocabulary. Their
comprehension can be recognized through their way of reading. Their low
comprehension is shown when they do not understand what they read. The
students can not answer question based on the selection, this maybe caused by
their limited vocabulary and bad memory . As soon as they read, they have to
close the text, but they can not answer the questions because they can not
retain what they have just read. In reading activity, students are forced to know
the implied and stated text messages of the texts given. Some students face
difficulties in reading English text. They must learn to navigate through
unfamiliar vocabulary and grammar structure.
Based on the problem above, in order to make comprehension easier in
reading a text, the teacher should the best technique in teaching reading
comprehension. So that, the students can enjoys and be stimulated in learning
English as foreign language especially in reading comprehension. One of them
is by using mind mapping technique. In reading classes, mind mapping will
help the students focus on key ideas written down in their own words,
understand and remember new information presented in the reading text.
In Mind Mapping Technique, the students can recognize the most
important ideas and information from a reading text and converting it into
diagram with their own words to help them understand and remembered what
they read. By using this technique will help students focus on key ideas
written down in their own words understand and remember. Reflecting that
fact, the researcher wants to implement or use Mind Mapping Technique in
teaching of reading comprehension as a problem solving to improve students’
achievement in teaching reading and to describe students’ reading
comprehension after taught using Mind Mapping Technique.
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4. B. Reason For Choosing The Topic
The reason of the researcher in choosing the topic can be formulated as
follows:
1. Reading is one of important languages that have to be mastered by
students in the junior high school.
2. Teaching reading using mind mapping can help student to understand
relationship the ideas in a text and remember what they read.
3. Mind mapping is very interesting technique that can help students enjoy
and be stimulated in reading text.
C. Question of study
This research is aimed to find the answer to the following research
questions.
1. How is the use of mind mapping technique in teaching reading
comprehension to improve students’ comprehension on narrative text at
the eight grades of students MTs I’anatut Thalibin Pati?
2. How is students’ achievement in reading comprehension after taught by
using mind mapping technique at the eight grade of students MTs I’anatut
Thalibin Pati?
D. Objective of The Study
The objectives of the study are as follows:
1. To describe the use of mind mapping technique in teaching reading
comprehension to improve students’ comprehension on narrative text at
the eight grades of students MTs I’anatut Thalibin Pati
2. To describe students’ achievement in reading comprehension after taught
by using mind mapping technique.
E. Significance of study
The researcher hopes that this research will be useful for:
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5. 1. The use of mind mapping can motivate the students to read a lot of English
reading text as they find it, easy and enjoyable to get and keep the message
comprehensively in their mind.
2. The teachers can use mind mapping to enrich their teaching technique, and
to be apply in offer coming reading comprehension teaching difficulties
that arise in classroom.
3. It will give contribution in English teaching learning process especially in
teaching reading to improve students’ comprehension.
F. Limitation of study
Research should be limited in it is scope, so that the problem being
examined is not too wide and the research is effective. The limitation of this
study they are:
1. The research subject of this research are the students of grade VIII B of
MTs I’anatut Thalibin Pati in Academic year 2008 / 2009
2. The instrument of the study which is the instructional program and the
achievement test will be developed by the researcher herself
3. Because of many kinds of teaching technique, Mind Mapping Technique
as chosen as the employed technique and text that is used in this research
focuses on narrative text.
.4. The researcher using Mind Mapping Technique to narrative text with the
vocabulary comprehension.
G. Definition of term
1. Teaching
According to G. Hitchock and D. Hughes, teaching is process that
which goes on between teachers and learners in classroom, but it also an
activity which can take place in a variety of settings and with markedly
different groups of learners.6
Teaching also involves the application of
technical and profesional skills and knowledge to particular situations.
6 Hitchock, and David Hughes, Research and Teacher: A Qualitative Introduction To
School –Based Research (london ;Routledge , 1989 ) p.4
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6. 2. Reading Comprehension
According to Smith (1982) reading is an anticipatory, selective,
purposeful and comprehending process.7
As stated by Mc Donough and Shaw,
reading is one of the most important skills. Reading is the ability to draw
meaning from the printed page and interpret this information appropriately.8
Comprehension can be defined as linking new information to what we
know. Thus, we understand texts by using our knowledge of the world, the
content area, and the context involved, as well as our knowledge of semantics,
syntax, morphology and orthographic.9
According to Webster’s dictionary,
comprehension is the act of or capacity for understanding.10
Reading
comprehension is a term used to identify those skills needed to understand and
apply information contained in a written material.11
As stated by Grabe and
Stoller reading comprehension is the ability to understand information in a
text an interpreted it appropriately.12
3. Mind Mapping
Anderson (1978) assert that mapping is a process of recognizing and
arranging or moving the most important ideas and information from a reading
text or textbook and converting it into a diagram with the reader’s own words
to help them understand and remember what they read. A mind map is a
diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and
arranged radially around a central key word or idea.13
4. Technique
In the teaching learning process, methods and technique take the biggest
part of how teaching process take place. Because it gives link between the
7J . Michael O’melly and Anna Uhl Chamot, Teaching Second Language Reading For
Academic Purposes (new york ;cambridge university press, 1992 ) p.28
8 William Grabe and Fredricka L. Stoller, Op.Cit, p. 9
9 Richard R Day (ed), New Ways In Teaching Reading, (US ; Teachers of English to
Speakers Of Other Language Inc. (TESOL) ), p. 46
10 Noah Webster, Webster’s new 20th
Century Dictionary Of The English Language, (US;
William Collins publisher, 1980 ) p. 374
11 J. P. Olson and M. H. Diller, Learning To Teach Reading In Elementary School,
(London : Macmillan Publishing Company, 1982) p. 42
12 William Grabe and Fredricka L. Stoller, Op.Cit, p. 17
13Tony Buzan, Mind Map, retrieved from: http//: www/ en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/
mind.map, December 12, 2008.
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7. thought and action of teaching. As stated by Harmer technique is the rule of
activity in the class which is used to describe the sets of procedure.14
According to Freeman and Larsen technique is a set of rules which is the
formulation of the appropriate method in language teaching, thinking about
appropriateness of the learning progress.15
5. Narrative Text
Narrative text is a story like account of an event from the past.16
14Jeremy Harmer, Op.Cit, p. 78
15 Jack C. Richard and Theodore S. Rodgers, Approaches and Methods in Language
Teaching : description and analysis (US: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 2nd
ed , p. 15
16 B. Jay, The Psychology Of Language, (New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2003), p. 98
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