How Mind Mapping
Boosts Your Writing
The study of English
has been still about mastering the four skills of the language namely
Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. These skills are then grouped into
two categories. They are passive skill which pervades listening and reading,
and productive skill covering speaking and writing. If we compare the two
categories above, productive skill is considered giving more challenge to the
students due to its demand to obligate the students to produce the product of
writing which surely must meet the standards of structure, diction, cohesion,
and coherence. This is supported by the fact that most English learners
especially at college tend to produce poor writing essay.
What is then the
primary problem or cause making writing that hard? Is it vocabulary? Is it
structure? Or is it lack of idea? The answer is Yes to all these possibilities
but which one is the hardest? For this answer, idea organizing is the only possible
one. But WHY? Dealing with vocabulary, dictionary can often be helpful because
some writing classes open the chance to use dictionary or when the learners are
asked to write at home. Dealing with structure, grammar books are always useful
as a reference or guide to cope with tense and structure. In addition, even PC
today benefits a lot in checking the misspelling and grammar while typing. It
is so obvious that when we type a word then suddenly a red line appears under
the word we typed, that means a misspelling occurs. However, most students
particularly those who are still in lower semester, they tend to ignore the
green line appearing under the sentence or phrase. In fact, this means
something wrong with the structure. All this problems can instantly be solved
by clicking right paste; the options of the corrections will emerge. But again,
most English learners pay less attention to this.
As it has been stated
above that idea organizing is the most difficult thing to cope with writing, we
need to figure out what make it that difficult. First, we have to know three
main obstacles about writing most learners face ; 1. What to write. 2. How to
start and 3. In action problem. Each is discussed below.
- What to write
When
the learners have to write an essay or simple story, they are confused about
what to write about. Even if the theme has been determined by the teachers to
help the students focus on certain scope, the confusion might still appear
dealing with what angel to snapshot and transferred into piece of writing.
- How to start
Often,
when the idea is on hand, the learners confuse of the first few sentences. What
sentence to use to open the paragraph.
- In action problemWhen the first paragraph has been done, the next problem usually occurs is how to develop and connect the first paragraph with the further paragraphs. This part is quite difficult because it determines whether the writer can develop the idea or in the other words, will there be a good cohesion and coherence.
All
the three obstacles above is actually about one thing, namely the matter of preparation. Lack of preparation may result in a poor
writing product. In this case, Mind Mapping can be used to boost your writing
quality. But before, I think it is a good thing to start with understanding
what mind mapping is.
According to
Kennedy (2005), Mind mapping is a fairly new technique that allows person to
both brainstorm and structure thoughts by giving graphics and words in a
free-ranging map. Mind mapping helps to connect and develop idea in a creative
and fun way. The learners may use chart, symbol, words, or even picture to
create their own mind mapping. It is also believed that mind mapping is better
than outlining due to some reasons.
Mind
mapping makes four areas in our brain work together in creating the unique map.
So, the flow of jotting down the details idea is smoother. In the other hand,
outlining seems like forcing someone to develop the idea in a very rigid way.
It makes brain work in a very hierarchy way; what comes after 1.1., 1.2., etc.
The flow is slow and there will be more pause in thinking of what to write next
in the outline. Moreover, mind mapping has some benefits like what King (2007)
states;
ü Faster
and more creative thinking
ü Accomplish
more in a less time
ü Tune
into inner, intuitive idea
ü Freedom
to consider random thoughts and let yourself go
ü Makes
use of synvergent thinking – rather than using either the left (linear
thinking) brain or the right (artistic thinking) brain, both are at work
together.
Further, King (2007)
states that mind mapping is easy to create. He offers an alternative of how to
make a mind map;
- Because mind is actually focuses on the center, start in the centre of the paper with your topic and/or a symbol or icon circled.
- Draw lines radiating from the center and print any key words that comes to mind on each line (let yourself go, don’t worry if they seem not to relate to your topic)
- Do use color, pictures and symbols as you let the original words to activate other words to inspire other ideas. Associate freely and work quickly (when we slow down, we are tempted to judge and evaluate).
- Just keep going – as long as the ideas are coming and you are having fun.
- When you feel that you have done as much as you can, you can go back and organize, getting rid of what doesn’t work or it superfluous, and actually redrawing once the associations are made.
To
get a clearer view of what mind mapping looks like, a sample of mind mapping is
provided below.
The sample above looks interesting, isn’t it?. The centre is the topic, then five first branches is
the main topic developments. These five topics are then developed into details.
At least five paragraphs can be written based on the mind mapping above. It is
clear that this is a simple and practical method in writing preparation.
In the research I conducted in 2007,
mind mapping had successfully improved the writing quality of the students of
junior high school level. Most students obtained about 50% improvement on their
writing product. And again, it is mind mapping, it is about idea organizing ,
so it does not limit the age or level of people who are willing to use it. If
it worked for them, so it also will work for you. All you have to do is just
try it!.
20
September 2011,
Written
by
Khairunnisa,
S. Pd
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