IMPROVING STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENT IN WRITING HORTATORY EXPOSITION TEXT BY APPLYING CLUSTERING TECHNIQUE.

(1)

IMPROVING

STUDENTS’

ACHIEVEMENT IN WRITING

HORTATORY EXPOSITION TEXT BY APPLYING

CLUSTERING TECHNIQUE

A THESIS

Submitted to the English Department, in Partial Fulfillment of Requirement for the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan

By:

EFRIYANTI SIREGAR

Registration Number: 209421011

ENGLISH AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS

(2)

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The writing of this thesis is aimed to fulfill one of the academic

requirements for the degree of Sarjana Pendidikan at the English and Literature

Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan.

The writer would like to express the greatest gratitude to Allah Subhanahu wata’ala, the most gracious, the most merciful for blessing to complete this thesis.

The writer would like to express a special gratitude to:

- Prof. Dr. Ibnu Hajar Damanik, M.Si., The Rector of State University of Medan.

- Dr. Isda Pramuniati, M.Hum., The Dean Faculty of Language and Arts, State University of Medan.

- Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M.Pd., as the Head of English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts.

- Rika, S.Pd.,M.Hum, as the Secretary of English and Literature Department. - Dra. Masitowarni Siregar, M.Ed., as the Head of English Education Study

Program.

- Dr. Anni Holila Pulungan, M.Hum., her Thesis Advisor for her great care, patience, comments and suggestions in guiding her in the process of preparing

this thesis until it appears as it should be.

- Drs. Johan Sinulingga, M.Pd., her Academic Advisor, for his suggestion, advice and his time spent supervising for this thesis.

- Drs. Willem Saragih, Dipp. Appl., M.Pd., her Examiner in proposal and thesis seminar, for his suggestion, comments and his time for this thesis.

- Drs. Sularno, M.P., The headmaster of SMA An-Nizam Medan, M. Guntar, S.Pd., the English teacher, and all the students in class XI-IPA.

- H. Maksum Siregar and Hj. Samaria Harahap, her parents for their never ending support, care, love and everything they have given to the writer.

(3)

- Ahmad Mukhtar Hrp, Siti Hamida, Nurhayani, Azrina Manja, Ika, Purnama, Eva Saskia Rahma, Sri Ernita, Ibu Eis, for their greatest support, care, suggestion, and love and all students of Reg B 09.

- Lastly, the writer offers her regards and blessing to all of those who supported her in any aspects during the completion of this thesis. May Allah Subhanahuwata’ala bless and guide you all.

Medan, Maret 2014

The writer,

Efriyanti Siregar

(4)

ABSTRACT

Siregar, Efriyanti. Improving Students’ Achievement in Writing Hortatory Exposition Text by Applying Clustering Technique. A thesis. English Department. Faculty of Language and Arts. State University of Medan. 2014.

This study attempted to improve students’ achievement in writing hortatory exposition text by applying clustering technique. It was conducted by applying classroom action research which consisted of two cycles in six meetings. Every meeting consisted of four phases. The subject of this study was class XI IPA of SMA An-Nizam Medan. The number of students was 29 students. The instruments for collecting data were writing test for quantitative data and observation sheet, questionnaire sheet and interview sheet for qualitative data. Based on the students’ test, the students’ score was improved in every test. In Test I, the mean score was 59,41. In the Test II, the mean score was 69, 65. In the test III, the mean score of the students was 78, 17. After applying clustering technique in each treatment, the mean of each test improves and gets better. The use of clustering technique tends to be more effective and to make students interest in studying English especially in writing hortatory exposition text.

(5)

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. The Background of the Study

Writing is a basic language skill that becomes the complex skill to master for

the learners. As we know that writing is a productive skill that involves the way to

generate and organize the ideas in written form. People need to learn English

writing because it is a process of transforming thought and ideas into written

language. Harmenita and Yuli (2013) also stated that writing is one of the

language skills that must be mastered by English learners. They have to able to

express their thoughts in writing to develop their ideas, and make readers interest

when their writing read. Through writing, they can also transfer information and

knowledge to others. In other words, writing can be said as a mean of

communication between the writer and the reader.

In fact, in Indonesia students’ writing skill in English language is very low. It

is found that most of Indonesian students are still difficult in comprehending the

text. The results of research Program for International Student Assessment (2010)

shows that Indonesian students just got the 39th rank from 42 surveyed countries

in Asia, slightly above Albania and Peru. It shows us that writing skill is still a

problem for Indonesian students.

SMA An-Nizam Medan has Minimum Mastery Criteria (MMC) of English

(12)

2

Because we found that student has difficult to write a text well based on the genre.

It can be shown from the mean of student’s writing ability in the table below.

Table 1.1 The mean of students’ ability in writing taken from second grade of SMA An-Nizam Medan

Semester

Means of students’ ability in language skill

Reading Speaking Listening Writing

I 65 64 63 65

II 68 68 65 69

From the fact above, it supported the researcher to do an interview and

observation at SMA An-Nizam Medan.

According to Salam (2011), many problems faced by the teachers and the

students in learning writing. The problem is limited vocabularies, diffilculty in

organizing ideas, no ideas to write about, no motivation to write and lack of

confidence in grammar. Students might take much time to write down their ideas.

Teachers also need to give full attention to their students to show them how to

plan a piece of writing through prewriting, drafting, and revising activities. Then,

some teachers still use thetraditional method or technique and just give

explanation and exercises to their students. So it makes students less

comprehended, less interest in writing, and makes students bored. The effect can

be seen in English writing score, it is regarded as a main problem in many school.

During teaching practice (PPL),the researcher also found that the students

face the same problem in writing proficiency as the factors mentioned above. In

this study the researcher choose hortatory exposition text as the students’ genre

(13)

3

a critical thinking, scientific ideas, and argumentative expression. By interviewing

some English teachers during teaching practice (PPL), a lot of students think that

it is a difficult writing assignment they have. They spend a lot of time focusing

only on how to start writing. This factor may come from the students’ experience

about hortatory exposition text is still low and it is a new thing for them. From

that case, both the teachers and the students need a significant way of teaching and

learning in order to improve student achievement in writing.

In the teaching-learning process, there are many ways that can help the

teacher to solve the students’ difficulties in writing by using technique and

strategy. Considering the facts above, the researcher chooses to conduct this study

by using clustering. Dietsch (2003:26) state that clustering is kind of prewriting

activity that enrich idea before students startwriting. Clustering produces an

overview of a subject, suggests specific topics, and yields related details. At the

beginning of writing activity, students have to find out the idea what they want to

write about. According to Rico (2000: 38) Clustering, the basic technique of

natural writing, can be used to generate ideas for writing of any form : essays,

poems, short stories, business reports, song lyrics, even novels.

Based on definition above, the researcher summarizes that clustering is

making visual map to produce a topic related to each other. Clustering technique

will stimulus students’ ideas and also they can make a good paragraph in every

types of writing. In addition, the use of appropriate technique can solve the

problems occurring in writing class and clustering technique gives a contribution

(14)

4

In line with the explanation above, the researcher isinterested in conducting a

research on “Improving Students’ Achievement in Writing Hortatory Exposition

Text by Applying Clustering Technique”.

B. The Problem of the Study

In the relation to the background of the study, the research addresses the

following problem:

“Is there any improvement of student’s achievement in writing a hortatory text by

applying clustering technique?”

C. The Objective of the Study

Clustering is kind of prewriting activity that enrich idea before students start

writing. Its helps the students to produce an overview of a subject, suggests

specific topics, and yields related details. Based on the question formulated in the

problem of this study, the objective of the study is aimed to find out the

improvement of student’s achievement in writing hortatory exposition text by

applying clustering technique.

D. The Scope of the Study

The scope of this study is limited to investigate the student’s writing ability of

IX IPA students of SMA An-Nizam Medan in writing hortatory exposition text by

(15)

5

E. Significance of the Study

The result of the study is expected to give some benefits theoretically and

practically:

1. Theoretically, the result of this study is expected to enrich the literature of the

teaching learning process and to give a better understanding. In addition, the

result can be used as a references for further study.

2. Practically, the result of this study are expected to give benefit for the

teachers, researchers, students, and institution.

a) For teachers, the result of this study will be directly intended to provide

them with more understanding of the effectiveness of teaching writing by

applying clustering.

b) For researchers, the result of this study is used as a reference in

conducting further research/study for obtaining better result.

c) For students, the result of this study can be used to encourage and

stimulate them in improving their writing ability.

d) For institution, it can be used to develop the teaching learning technique

(16)

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

A. Conclusion

After analyzing the data there was an improvement on students’ writing

hortatory exposition text by using clustering. The score of the students improved

from cycle I to cycle II. The improvement can be seen from the mean of students’

namely: the mean of test I (59,41 ), the mean of test II ( 69,65 ) and the mean of

test III( 78,17 ). Beside the mean of the score, there was percentage of the students

who got the score above 75. In test I there was 6,89% (2 students), in test II there

was 34,48% (10 students) and in test III there was 68,96% (20 students).

From the data can be concluded that teaching writing hortatory exposition

text by applying clustering technique can help the students to improve their ability

in writing. And the students were more enjoyable and interested in learning

hortatory exposition text by applying clustering technique.

B. Suggestion

Based on the result of this study, the use of clustering technique could

improve the students’ achievement on writing hortatory exposition text. The

following suggestions are offered:

1. To the students, they are suggested to use clustering technique while

(17)

47

2. To the teachers, they are suggested to apply clustering technique so that

they can improve their students’ achievement in writing hortatory

exposition text.

3. To all the readers, may this research bring them into good understanding

(18)

REFERENCES

Burns, Anne. 2010. Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching: A

Guide for Practitioner. New York: Rouledge Taylor and Prancis Group.

Dietsch, Betty Mattix. 2003. Reasoning of Writing Well. New York: McGraw-Hill

Fajriyani, Tita Nurul. 2011. Improving Students’ Writing Ability through

Clustering Technique. Unpublished Thesis. Jakarta: Faculty of Tarbiyah

and Teachers’ Training, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University.

Grenville, Kate. 2001. Writing from Start to Finish : A Six – Step Guide. South

Australia : Allen & Unwin.

Harmenita, R.Y., and Yuli T. 2013. Teaching Writing a Descriptive Text by Using Environmental Observation Strategy. Journal of English Teaching, vol 1 (2).

Harmer , Jeremy. 2004. How to Teach Writing. Harlow : Longman

Hermansyah. 2012. Teaching Descriptive Writing Using Clustering Technique at

the Second Grade Students of MAN Cimahi. Unpublished Thesis. Bandung:

English Education Program Language and Art Department, STKIP Siliwangi Bandung.

Hoover, Katylee. 2008. Writing: An Essential Component of Literacy. Research Alignment for MM-H California Treasures, June: 1-2.

Hyland, K. 2003. Genre-Based Pedagogies: A Social Response to Process.

Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (1): 17–29.

Kalandadze, Maya. 2007. English Academic Writing. Europe: CSS

Kember, David. 2000. Action Learning and Action Research. London: Kogan Page Limited.

Knapp, P., and Megan. 2005. Genre, Text, Grammar : Technologies for Teaching

(19)

49

Mandal, M. 2009. Cooperative Learning Strategies to Enchance Writing skill. Academic Journal, 1(2), 94-102.

Miller, Cristine A. 2007. Action Research: Making Sense of Data. Academic Journal, 1(1), 9-28.

Pardiyono. 2007. Pasti Bisa! Teaching Genre-Based Writing.Yogyakarta: ANDI.

PISA. 2010. Highlight from PISA 2009-National Center for Education Statistic.

Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2): 16-24.

Purnama, Ika. 2013. Improving Students’ Achievement on writing Narrative Text

by Using Clustering Technique. Unpublished Thesis. Medan: Faculty of

Language and Art, State University of Medan.

Rico, Gabriele. 2000. Writing The Natural Way. New York: J.P. Tarcher, Inc.

Sagor, Richard. 2000. Guiding School Improvement with Action Research. Virginia, USA: ASCD

Salam, Abdul. 2011. Using Clustering to Improve Students’ Writing of Recount

Text. Unpublished Thesis. Jakarta: Faculty of Tarbiyah and Teachers’

Training, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University.

Siahaan, S., and Shinoda, K. 2008: Generic Text Structure 1st Ed. Yogyakarta:

Graha Ilmu.

Weigle, S.C. 2009. Assessing Writing. London: Cambridge University Press.

Yan, Gua. 2005. A Process Genre Model for Teaching Writing. English Teaching