ABSTRACT

Agus, Firman. 2007. Increasing Ability to Write Draft of Composition through

Clustering Technique of Eleventh Grade Students at SMK Negeri 1
Bojonegoro in Academic Year 2006/2007. Thesis, English Education
Department, Postgraduate Program, Islamic University of Malang. Advisors:
(1) Drs. H. Junaidi Mistar, M.Pd., Ph.D., (2) Drs. Alfan Zuhairi, M.Pd.

Key Words: Clustering, technique, draft of composition, increasing, writing skill

Students often complain about writing activity in the classroom. They do not
know what to write and where to start. And, lack of vocabulary worsens this
condition. They neither have ideas to write on their papers nor ways of generating
ideas. They also have difficulty to find topics to write. Wasting more than a
quarter of hour to think and find only an idea is not a common thing in the
classroom. Moreover, many teachers do not have interest to give their students
writing activity.

This study was undertaken to improve students’ writing skill on the pre-writing
stage through clustering technique because this stage determines the success for
next stages, especially skills in writing a topic sentence and supporting sentences,
organizing ideas into paragraphs. Technique of using clusters, which is believed
to be able to solve students’ writing problem in generating ideas, is developed in
writing activities done by the eleventh-grade students of SMK Negeri 1
Bojonegoro in 2006/2007 academic year.

To achieve the purpose, a collaborative classroom action research, which was

dopeted from Kemmis and Taggart (1998) was implemented. The action research
was implemented in two cycles where each cycle contains planning,
implementing, observing and reflecting. And the instrument used to collect data is
questionnaire, observation, and documents.

The results of the study shows that students’ skill in writing a topic sentence,
supporting sentences, strong words, ending sentence, complete sentences,
punctuation, spelling, and grammar could be improved through clustering
technique. The activities students should do involved; choosing a topic and
generating their ideas based on the topic in clusters. They then should build
sentences from their clusters and arranged the sentences into paragraphs

Preliminary study showed that 7% of the students got B (70-84) and the rest were
under the minimum passing grade (B). The results of the study showed that the
average score of writing test in cycle 1 was 68.85 and did not show the indication
of satisfying as it was less than 70. Only 17.5% of the students got (70-84). On the
other hand, the researcher targeted 80% of the students get minimum score 70. In
cycle 2, the average score (76.86) had passed the minimum passing grade standard
(70) and 85% of the students had minimum score of 70.
The findings of the study suggest that clustering technique should be implemented
in the teaching of writing. It is also suggested that further researcher develop the
activities and cover other components such as vocabulary and language use.