CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A.
Background
of The Problem
Language
is an important tool for communication. According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary of Current English, language is “(1)The system of
communication in speech and writing that is used by people of a particular
country, (2) the use by humans of a system of sound and words to communicate,
(3) a particular style of speaking or writing”.1 It means people can express
their ideas, thoughts, feelings, and desires by language. In Indonesia, English
has become the first foreign language which is taught from elementary level up
to university. English is also intensively used in international communication,
in written as well as in spoken communication. In addition, many books of
science and technology, art, and other published issues are written in English.
In English language, there are four skills to be mastered. They are listening,
speaking, reading and writing.
Writing
is one of the four language skills which is very important to learn. As it know,
writing is not easy. Among the skills, writing is the most difficult skill to
be learnt, because it needs hard thinking in producing words, sentences, and
paragraph at the same time. Writing is the process of creating text. In writing
process there are steps that can be used to get good writing. According to Ron White
and Valerie cited by Jeremi Harmer, “writing is re-writing, that
re-vision seeing with new eyes, has a
central role play in the act of creating text. Drafting, structuring,
reviewing, focusing, generating idea and evaluation are the part of process
writing”.
Mark
Tredinnick (2008) also explained: Writing is the art of
making utterance perfectly natural through the perfectly unnatural process of
making every word and phrase again and again, cutting here and add there, until
it is just so. It is contrived spontaneity. What the researcher wants is
something just like speech only more compressed, more melodic, more economical,
more balance, more precise.
As
Jack
C. Richard and Willy A. Renandya said, “ writing is the most difficult
skill for second language learners to master. The difficulty lies not only in
generating and organizing ideas, but also in translating these ideas into
readable text.” Writing is a complicated process of problem solving which
involves controlling the text, reaching the purpose of writing the thoughts in
the text, planning-arranging the thoughts and collecting data for the target (Chen
and Zhou, 2010). Thoughts, which are composed according to the aim of
writing, are unique and single. People have a peculiar writing style like
speaking style, because writing is the product of cognitive process and
original creation. Yilmaz (2009) explains the originality of writing with the help
of Altınköprü,
1999 as: “Writing is a form reflected from the individual. Even if it is a
learnt technique, it is a trace from him/her. That is him, peculiar to him or
emphasizes him. It is certain like his finger print, determines the person,
single like personality, and changes from person to person.” The originality of
writing (and of thought) appears
with using effectively the right brain which includes creativeness of
individuals.
From
the explanation above, the writer assume that that the word read not only means
reading, but also writing, thinking or understanding. Writing is also important
to be learned, because by writing, the knowledge can be kept. In the second
year of junior high school, the basic competency that should be achieved in the
writing English subject is that the students have ability to develop and
produce written simple functional text in the descriptive text, recount text,
and narrative text.
Descriptive
text is one of the functional texts which is difficult enough to be learnt by
the students. Based on Artono (2008) descriptive text is a
text that describes the features of someone, something, or a certain place.
Descriptive text consists of introduction and description. Introduction is the
part of paragraph that introduces the character, and description is the part of
paragraph that describes the character. Ann Hogue explained that we have to
tell about characteristic when we describe a person, and also tell about it
looks like when we describe a place. But we have to tell about place first,
then what people are doing if we describe scene with people. The students can
use the simple present and adjective clause in writing descriptive text. In
writing the descriptive text, students often find some difficulties. The
students usually feel difficult to organize their ideas. Furthermore, many
students made some mistakes and faced difficulties to build and develop their
imagination.
It
needs the technique that can be used to improve ability in writing of descriptive
text. According to Edward Anthony in Richards identified that technique is
implementation-that which actually takes place in classroom. It is a particular
trick, stratagem, or contrivance used to accomplish an immediate objective. To
modify positively the situation of the classroom and to make the
teaching-learning process lively, the writer would like to propose an
alternative technique, that is the one which common known under the term
“Clustering Technique”. Clustering technique is a good way to turn a broad
subject into a limited and more manageable topic for a short essay. According
to John
Langan, clustering technique also known as diagramming or mapping, is
another strategy that can be used to generate material for a paper. Rico (1983)
defined clustering as a "nonlinear brain storming process akin to free
association". It is a powerful technique which allows students to discover
or "uncover" what they think about a subject; it provides
organization to thought without slowing the flow of thoughts; it can help the
thinker assess the quality of thought and serve as a guide for writing. Indeed,
after clustering ideas, one can move directly to writing in paragraph form.
Thus depending upon purpose, clustering may be used for thinking (cluster as an
end product); or as a prewriting strategy (cluster as an organizational guide
for writing). However it is used, clustering is a dynamic process best
understood by experiencing it first hand.
In
this technique, students can be helped to collect and generate the ideas to
write descriptive easily. This technique uses the diagram or circles to get the
ideas and connect them like branches. The ideas that relate to the topic are
connected by using the lines like branches. Clustering can help students to
start writing. Students can easy to gathering ideas by writing many words as a
keyword that relate to the topic. This technique give benefit for students when
they have difficulty to start writing, especially in writing descriptive text.
Moreover, the clustering technique can motivate the students to write and to
stimulus their ideas. Beside that, this technique will help the students to
organize their thinking before they develop in a paragraph.
The writer found a problem faced by students at eight
grades of SMPN 1 Ngadiluwih, the process of teaching –learning in the classroom
is still passive. The students do not understand clearly about descriptive
text, how to identify the descriptive text, and how to describe persons,
places, and things in English writing. Beside that, the teacher uses the old
technique in teaching descriptive text (Grammar Translation Method) which makes
the students felt bored and difficult to understand the material when teaching
learning process conducted. Therefore, the teacher needs to be more creative in
teaching, including the use of technique.
Based on the background above, the writer takes a
title of this research “Improving Students’ Skill in Writing Descriptive
Text Using Clustering Technique At Eight Grades of SMPN 1 Ngadiluwih on Academic
Year 2014/2015”.
B.
Identification
of The Problem
The writer find a problem faced by students at eight
grades of SMPN 1 Ngadiluwih, where students were still confused in writing
descriptive text. Some students got good result but some students were confused
in making descriptive text and got dissatisfying score. They got the score
under the minimum passing score. So, it became a problem that important to be
solved. To solve the problem and forthe reason above, the writer try to use
clustering as a technique for learning or teaching writing especially in descriptive
text in order to the students easier in getting the ideas then composing the
text. By using clustering, student learn how to get or generating the ideas
easily.
C.
Scope
of The Study
In this research, the writer only focuses on eighth
grades of SMPN 1 Ngadiluwih on Academic
Year 2014/2015, and to make a description of this research deeper, the
problems will be limited in the implementation of using clustering technique for
improving students skill in writing descriptive text.
D.
Researh
Questions
Based on the statement above, the writer plans to
analyze the implementation of clustering technique in teaching writing of
descriptive text at the eighth grades of students of SMPN 1 Ngadiluwih. This
research is intended to answer the following questions:
1.
How can clustering technique improve
students’ writing skill of descriptive text of eight grades at SMPN 1
Ngadiluwih?
2.
How is the students’ response when they are taught writing on descriptive text
use clustering technique?
E.
Purpose
of The Study
Based on the research questions above, the
objectives of the study are:
1. To describe the use of clustering
technique to improve students’ writing skill of descriptive text.
2. To find out the response of students’
writing skill of descriptive text after being taught using clustering
technique.
F.
Significant
of The Study
Based on the purposes of study, the significance of
the study can be stated as follows:
1. For writer
By
doing this research, the researcher hopes that he will get some experiences and
knowledge about his study and it will be useful in the future. Besides, the
researcher hopes can find the effective way to teach writing by using another
technique.
2. For Teacher of English Subject
By
doing this research, the teacher is expected to be more creative in creating a
technique to improve students’ skill especially for writing, so it can decrease
students’ boredom in teaching learning process.
3. For Students
By
using clustering technique, the students are expected to improve their writing
on descriptive text.
4.
Other researcher
For further researchers
who are interested in teaching descriptive writing at junior high school level
can get the basic information from this study to do the further research.
G.
Hypothesis
Using custering
technique can improve students’ skill in writing descriptive text at eight
grades of SMPN 1 Ngadiluwih on academic year 2014/2015.
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