The Role of Life Maps in Writing Student Essays

Abstract

This study aims to describe the students' ability in essays writing based on life maps. Students write their essays based on their interpretation of the life map. Students self-expressions, which are ideas, thoughts, feelings, imagination, and intuition are developed based on the life map that previously written. As a non-academic text, essays able to facilitate the writers' creativity in languages proficiency. Moreover, the Life Map is used as a tool to change the negative stigma, from a boring subject into a fun subject so that its role as a personality subject can be realized. The descriptive qualitative research method is used to achieve these objectives. The research subjects are 34 first-semester students of the Indonesian Language and Literature Education Program. Data in the form of language units in the essay are analyzed and interpreted for their role. While the reflective lectures journals are used as secondary data. The results showed that all students (100%) recognized the life map as a motivator for them to take Indonesian language courses. This finding is also strengthened by other evidence, which are the observation sheets that capture the students' responsive and creative attitude in creating life maps and transform them into an essay form. Student language creativity can be identified in the foreword words of the essays that usually consists of wisdom words of life values. These expressions mark the students' commitment to a meaningful life.