Color can stimulates creative thinking which helps to distinguish areas of creative thought and stimulates the visual centers of the brain and captures the eyes' attention and interest.
- Connect mind branches to the central image and connect the second and third levels of branches to the first and second levels. It is caused by the brain which works by association. If the branches are connected, the ideas also connect in one's head which will spark more creative thought.
- Make the branches curved rather than straight. Â A mind map with straight lines is boring to the eyes and does not reflect its creative intent.
- Use one word per line
A single word or image generates its own vast array of creative thought. They leave the mind to spark new thoughts whereas phrases or sentences tend to dampen that triggering the effect.
- Use images throughout.
Each image like the central image, it worth a thousand words. Besides the image is easy to remember, they can stimulate new creative associations.
Those are some steps that should be done in making mind mapping. Those steps will help how to make mind mapping proper and easy. Mind mapping strategy has some advantages and disadvantages.
According to Buzan in Muhib (2014:18), the advantages of mind mapping are:
- The center of a mind map (main idea) is defined clearly.
- The level of each idea is shown clearly. The important idea is near of the center and on the other hand.
- The relation between keywords can be shown quickly because of its relation. It makes the remembering of students more effective.
- A mind map is seen differently from other maps
- The structure of the mind map has probably added new information.
     While disadvantages of mind mapping are that it needs a lot of time in the organization, difficulties in allocating time, need many times to find an effective keyword. It can be concluded that the mind mapping strategy has more advantages than disadvantages. It means that it is recommended to be used as a strategy in teaching-learning.
Conclusion
      The writing process is divided into three stages: planning, drafting and revising. Mind mapping is a technique pre-writing activity that becomes an important start in the planning stage. By drawing the Mind Mapping first it can guide the students to the next steps, drafting and revising.
      Mind mapping offers some advantages. It can be combined with other activities. Secondly, it can introduce the students to the stages of writing, the generic structure, and the language features of text types. Thirdly, it helps students to get a deeper understanding of the topic and generate ideas easily. Thus, the students are encouraged to apply the writing process. As a result, they could produce better results in writing.
References
Harmer, J. (2001). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman: Pearson Education Limited.
