IMPROVING WRITING SKILL OF THE SEVENTH- GRADE STUDENTS OF SMP N 1 KUTA UTARA IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2024/2025 THROUGH CLUSTERING TECHNIQUE

One of the four fundamental skill that students must acquire in order to learn English is writing. Writing is referred to help students become better communicators in the target language and help them avoid misunderstandings when writing. In writing, the students still had problems especially in developing their ideas. They struggled in composing unified and coherent paragraphs and a complete generic structure of descriptive paragraphs. This study used classroom action research that was conducted in two cycles. The required data were collected by administering research instruments: tests and a structured questionnaire. After the cyclical research processes, it was found that Clustering Technique was appropriate teaching technique to improve the subjects' writing skill. It could be seen from the results of the pre-test, post-test 1 and post-test 2, which was respectively figures of 52.40, 71.16, dan 82.16. These showed significant improvements in the subjects’ writing skill. Furthermore, it was supported by the structured questionnaire percentages, which showed positive responses to the implementation of Clustering Technique. Based on the research findings, it can be finally concluded that writing skill of the seventh-grade students of SMP N 1 Kuta Utara in the academic year 2024/2025 could be improved by implementing Clustering Technique.