THE USE OF CLUSTERING TECHNIQUE IN IMPROVING WRITING ABILITY OF THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMPN 1 PAYANGAN IN ACADEMIC YEAR 2022/2023

Writing skill in language learning is said as one of the most difficult skills. Even though, the ability in writing enables students to use target language communicatively, such as to express idea, share information, and respond to any question in written form. However, the students still faced difficulties to construct their ideas in writing a paragraph, which in prewriting process. In addition, they were lack in grammar and could not organize their ideas well. This study aimed to find out whether or not clustering technique can improve the eighth-grade students’ writing ability of SMPN 1 Payangan in academic year 2022/2023. The present study used Classroom Action Research (CAR) design which was done in two cycles. The required data was collected by administering two kinds of research instrument, writing test and questionnaire. The mean score of pre-test was 59.88, post-test 1 was 72.25, and post-test 2 was 81.63. It showed that students’ writing ability in pretest was still low. After conducting the cyclical process, the result of pre-test and post-test in cycle I and cycle II clearly showed significant improvement in writing ability. Furthermore, the result of the questionnaire supported the result of the study. From the questionnaire, there were 56.08% students who strongly agreed with the implementation of clustering technique in writing descriptive paragraph, 33.29% agreed, 10.20% chose neutral, 0.43% disagreed, and 0% strongly disagreed. It can be concluded that clustering technique could improve the writing ability of the eighth -grade students of SMPN 1 Payangan in academic year 2022/2023.