Abstract :
The objectives of this research were to determine whether or not mind mapping is effective to improve students' writing abilities, covering content, organization, vocabulary, language use and mechanics components and to know which aspects is dominantly improved by the effectiveness of mind mapping. This research employed quantitative method by using one group pre-test and post-test design. The population for tenth grade was seventeen classes from nine different majors. The sample was used random sampling technique. The class selected by the deputy head of curriculum that is X AKL 1 which consisted of 33 students. The instrument of this research was a writing test used in pre-test and post-test. The result of the data indicated that the use of mind mapping in improving students writing ability for tenth-grade students of SMK Negeri 8 Bandar Lampung was effective as a technique that helps students improve their writing ability. Since, the mean of students pre-test score was calculated 72.45 and the mean of students post-test score was calculated 84.21. Moreover, the comparison of students pre-test and post-test score were calculated significance value (2-tailed) was 0.000 (0.000 < 0.05). With these results, it can be concluded that H0 was rejected, but H1 was accepted. This data also shows that among the five components of writing the most increasing is content. It means that, there was significant improvement in students' writing abilities between the pre-test and post-test scores as a result of using mind mapping as a technique to teach writing narrative text in tenth grade of SMK Negeri 8 Bandar Lampung. Key words: mind mapping, narrative text, writing ability