Using Mind Mapping to Teach Vocabulary

Helena

Abstract:

English is one of the important subjects has been taught by many schools

around the world especially in Indonesia. However, even though English has been

taught since kindergarten, English is still considered as a subject that is difficult to

master because many people do not have a strong vocabulary as their basic

component. Moreover, many teachers still use repetition drill and memorization

which makes students lack of motivation and interest in learning English

vocabulary which resulted in students didn’t understand the material. In order to

make students learn vocabulary in an enjoyable and fun way. From many

techniques to teach vocabulary, mind mapping might provide a solution to the

student’s vocabulary learning.

Definition and key terms: Mind mapping, Vocabulary

English language is used by people around the world to communicate from

thousands of languages that spoken by around the world. Although English has been

international English by many people. There are several countries that used English

as a foreign language like Japan, Spanish, and Portuguese included our country

Indonesia. According to “English as foreign language because English here is not

used by people as medium of communication and instruction in average daily lives”

(Geoffrey Broughton, 1980).

Although English is has been taught since kindergarten as a part of curriculum,

it is still considered as a subject that difficult to master. Moreover, In order to master

English language, one needs to one needs to master four skills in English that is

listening and reading as receptive skills as well as speaking and writing as

productive skills. However, the mastery of English skills is difficult to do because

many people do not have a strong vocabulary as their basic component. According

to Djiwandono, (1996:1) “to master those language skills, the students have to

capitalize themselves with a lot of vocabulary items”. Moreover, (Dahlia, 2009:1)

who stated that vocabulary is an important key to fluency itself. Dellar and Hocking

(in Thornbury, 2002:13) also said, “If you spend most of your time studying

grammar, your English will not improve very much. You will see most

improvement if you learn more words and expressions. You can say very little with

grammar, but you can say almost anything with word”.

Without words one cannot express desire, idea, and emotions to other

people. Hence, vocabulary is an effective tool of communication. According to

Mukoroli (2011:6) “Vocabulary is a set of words that are the basic building blocks

used in the generation and understanding of sentences”. However, other expert

Akbari (2008: 54), “without vocabulary speakers cannot convey meaning and

communicate with each other in a particular language.” Furthermore Kim and Kim

claimed that “Vocabulary is base of the communication. Therefore, it is critical to

try and various and different teaching styles that cheers students”.
 It is important to learn vocabulary in studying English as foreign language

because without vocabulary one cannot understand the meaning of what they read

and listen. According to Mukoroli (2011:6) “Vocabulary is a set of words that are

the basic building blocks used in the generation and understanding of sentences”.

However, other expert Akbari (2008: 54), “without vocabulary speakers cannot

convey meaning and communicate with each other in a particular language.”

Furthermore Kim and Kim claimed that “Vocabulary is base of the communication”.

Some experts have several definitions of vocabulary and it can be described

as follows: According to Buckland (1999), vocabulary can be defined as the range

(or repertoire) of values in any field of bibliographic description and, in a more

extended sense, the range of types in a set at any level (word, field, collection, and

library). In addition to that, Thorn burry (2002) also says that “vocabulary is word

that known and has the meaning and form”. Moreover, Hornby (2000) states that

“vocabulary is the word in a language, in which all the words are known by

someone and used in the books, subject, and so forth”. Thus, vocabulary is set of

words that have meaning and form that is used by people to communicate in certain

language

Learning English can be difficult for students because in Indonesia English

is still foreign language that is rarely used in daily live. Moreover, Ghazal (2007:

84) stated that “vocabulary learning is one of major challenges foreign language

learners face during the process of learning language”. In addition, Vocabulary also

determined academic achievement of student who also learning language. Dunlap

and Weisman (2007: 145) “Vocabulary development is essential for English

learners’ academic success. There is strong relationship between vocabulary

knowledge and academic achievement”.

Teaching English vocabulary is challenging for students because they are

not accustomed to read and listen any information in English language. Saleh (1997:

12) argues that the success in mastering a language is determined by the size of the

vocabulary one has learned. Thornbury (2002: 23) adds that the learner needs not

only to learn a lot of words, but to remember them. Therefore, teacher need to be

creative in makes classroom activities when they are teaching vocabulary in order

to make students not just interested to the activities. However, they can understand

the material well. According to Nunan (1999) “Teaching vocabulary is a way done

by teachers in transferring new vocabulary to students. If one has an extensive

vocabulary, it is possible to obtain meaning from spoken and written texts even

though one does not know the grammatical structures in which the texts are

encoded”.

Thus, vocabulary is a basic element to master four skills in English

including reading, writing, listening and speaking. Moreover, it is important to

having adequate vocabulary to express idea, desires and emotions and understand

the meaning others speakers. Morra and Camba (2009: 22) said that “Nowadays it’s

widely accepted that vocabulary learning is one of essential elements both of

acquisition of one’s native language and learning of language”.

Cameron (2001) “young EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners have

lack amount and type of exposures to English”. Their experience of the language

outside the classroom is very little. Because learners have lack exposures to English
language, teachers need to be as creative as possible to use techniques that will

enhance student’s vocabulary learning. One of the famous techniques called mind

mapping.

Mind mapping was developed as an effective method for generating ideas

by association in the 1960s” (Murley, 2007). Many people said that it is creative

note taking because the process is like note taking you add idea to the topic given

while at the same time you figure pattern, picture and symbol at the same time.

(Budd, 2003; Murley, 2007: Siriphanic& Laohawiriyano, 2010; Al-Jarf, 2011)

stated that “It is a visual tool that can be used to generate ideas, take notes, organize

thinking, and develop concepts”.

There are several experts’ opinion toward the definition of mind mapping.

According to (Buzan (1993: 1) states that “Mind mapping is a powerful graphic

technique, which provides a universal key to unlock the potential of brain”.

Moreover, Al Jarf (2011:4), also added that “mind mapping is a graphic organizer

in which the major categories radiate from a central idea and sub – categories are

presented as branches of larger branches”. In addition to that, according to Martin

as translated into English (in Trianto, 2009: 158) “mind mapping is a concrete

graphic illustration which indicates how a single concept related to other concept in

the same categories” Furhermore, DePotter and Hernacki (2008:152) also stated

that, “Mind mapping uses visual reminder and sensory into a pattern from the ideas

which are related”. In conclusion, it can be concluded that mind mapping is one of

graphic organization that use visual reminder and sensory pattern to connect the

main idea with the sub categories.

 Mind map technique is most widely used by English teachers to enhance

learning in thinking process like managing, organizing, and make some connection

or pattern in creative way. Jones et al (2012: 2) stated, “Mind mapping helps

students learn information by forcing them to organize it and add images and color

to it. It allows students to create a visual image to enhance their learning”. In

addition, the learners also can make connection between the material and their

experiences and feeling. Furthermore, (Hofland (2007:5) argued “mind mapping is

a technique that stimulates both parts of the brain, the left side is used for rational

and logical thinking whereas right side is used for creative thinking”

Mind map also can connect knowledge that they have with their recent

information they get so that they can save so much information as much as possible.

According to (Buzan, 2009) mind mapping is an easy way to place information and

take information out from brain”. Furthermore, (Buzan, 2005) he also stated that

“mind map make us easy to remember and learn faster and efficient”. In addition to

that, Buzan also stated (Moi and Lian, 2007:3), “A mind mapping is a special kind

of brain friendly diagram that helps you to think, imagine, remember things and

plan and short information”.

According to Goldstein (in Kristina, 2010:10) there are four key

characteristics of mind mapping as follows: (1) There is one key concept, often

expressed graphically as an image (2). From the key concept or image radiate out

branches each of which represent less important concept (3). Attached to these main

branches are other branches which represent less important concept (4). Together,

the branches and central image from a nodal structure.

 Mind map technique also have advantages and disadvantages like (M.

Muhammad at all, 2014) stated in their journal. There are several advantages of

applying Buzan mind mapping. First, mind mapping makes students prepare note

from their book. Second, it is have simple principle, economical, and easy to use.

Third, it is one of the famous thinking tool to memorize better while they are

learning in enjoyable and fun way that activates both part of the brain. Fourth,

students are able to plan and organize their daily routines and they also can do quick

and effective revision. Fifth, mind mapping increase creativity of the students

because they to add some colors and little pictures to it. Sixth, students more

appreciate their own mind map because it likes their own masterpiece. Seventh, it

helps parents and teacher to check their progress and performance.

Although mind map has a lot of advantages, it still has one disadvantage

like mind map that using paper are hard to be saved and stored and many people

prefer to use mind map software because it is easy to be saved. Moreover, mind

map paper space is limited (M. Muhammad at all, 2014).

(M. Muhammad at all, 2014) also added that, there are several advantages

that can be used for brainstorming, summarizing information, note taking,

consolidating information, and thinking through complex problems and promotes

meaningful learning than memorization, presenting information in a format that

shows the overall structure of your subject, studying, retaining and recall

information, promotes meaningful learning instead of memorization

Moreover, According to Hobartswan (2010) Mind maps are used all around

the world, in education and in business. In education, they serve three powerful
functions: (1). as a students’ presentation tools (a welcome alternative to

PowerPoint) (2) as a pre-writing tool (3). As a teaching tool by chunking language,

mind mapping makes English more accessible to nonnative English speakers. More

about that later.

It can be concluded that English is one of the important subject in Indonesia

and although it has been taught since kindergarten, English language still become

one subject that difficult to master. In order to master English language one needs

to learn four basic skills reading, listening, speaking and writing. However, the

mastery of English is difficult because learners didn’t have strong vocabulary as

their basic component.

In addition, learning vocabulary can be challenging because the learners not

accustomed to read article and listen to the instruction. Many teachers also uses

repetition drill and memorization that is not effective anymore so that the students

in the class didn’t have interest to learn material and resulted in students didn’t

understand the material.

Mind mapping is one of the techniques that is effective to teach vocabulary

because it is use visual, images, colors that activate both parts of the brain, in the

left side for logical and rational thinking and in the right side use creative thinking

Moreover, mind map also can save so much information as much as possible and

increase thinking process like managing, organizing, and make pattern and

connection in creative way. Besides, mind map also has so many advantages that

will be useful for teach vocabulary.

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