It can be concluded that to use the clustering technique to students ’
descriptive writing, is firstly introducing about the topic, whether it describes about person, place, and object. Circle the topic which has been determined.
Try to engage students in clustering activity by giving their contribution in oral responses. After getting the topic, let them to explore their ideas. Make a
sentence of each idea that has been deserved.
Figure 2.1 The Application of Clustering technique
Source: https:mytutor.sfasu.edu:8080owlpreparation2
Figure 2.1 The Example of Clustering Technique
D. Previous Studies
This research is reflected of the relevance studies which had been conducted in educational field. Apparently, clustering technique is indeed effective to be a
prewriting strategy or technique in writing skill. The first relevant study
was conducted by Ronald T. Kellog entitled “The Effectiveness
of Prewriting Strategies as a Function of Task Demands” toward 207 college students. They wrote a short informative essay calling for analytical
thinking. The students began drafting without any prewriting time control, first prepared a hierarchical written outline outline, or first prepared a visual network
of ideas and their relations which is called clustering. There were three kinds of task demands. First, the task demanded the generation and organization of ideas.
Second, demanded organization but provided the suggested topic and ideas. Finally, the task demanded both topic and ideas and organizational of topic, ideas,
and organization. The content and style of the documents, fluency, and characteristics of prewriting plans generated by outlining and clustering were
measured. The result showed that, the outlining had improved the content and style, also fluency of drafting the text. The benefit of outlining was strongest for
the topic condition and nonexistent for the topic, ideas, and organization condition. Clustering increased the number of ideas generated during prewriting,
but had no impact on document quality. In this first previous study, the clustering technique was used to help
students doing their task demands in writing informative essay, the result of the research showed that the clustering technique had increased students’ ideas. The
ideas could be easily generated and organized by students. Yet, clustering technique did not influence the content of the essay. When students used an
outline, it had improved the content of the essay itself. It meant that the outline had more positive effect than clustering. It is quite different from this skripsi, in
fact, when clustering technique was applied to students’ descriptive writing of
second grade students at MTs. Nurul Hidayah, there was a positive effect to the content of students’ descriptive writing and it can be seen from the score results
when pre-test and post-test. Nevertheless, the similarity is clustering technique is effective to generate the students’ ideas in writing.
The second previous study is entitled “Developing Students’ Ability in
Descriptive Writing through Clustering Technique” in the First Year of Islamic Senior High School, MA Islamiyah Ciputat by Bayu Ertanto 2011. The writer
used a Class Action Research method, the data was derived from pre-test and post-test which was conducted to 20 students. The result showed that all students
had passed the criterion minimum of completeness KKM and the application of clustering technique was effective in writing descriptive text.
Furthermore, the second previous study also used clustering technique as the writing technique in writing a descriptive text; through clustering technique
students can pass the criterion minimum of completeness KKM and their writing had improved by using clustering technique. The difference is only on the design
of the study which used an Action Research and took one class as the sample of the study.
The “skripsi” entitled “Teaching Descriptive Writing through Clustering
Technique” of Tenth Grade Students of SMU Dwi Putra Ciputat by Taufik 2009 used pre-experimental research. The students are about 20 students of all Tenth
Grade. His study was not only focused on the effectiveness of using clustering in descriptive writing but also on teaching preparation of English teacher. The
findings of his research showed that the teaching preparation of the English teacher was poor and the application of clustering technique in writing descriptive
text was effective. The students’ score in writing before using clustering technique was about 43, it includes into “low standard”. After using clustering technique,
the students’ score in writing was 60, it includes into “enough standard”.
T he last previous study used clustering technique to improve students’
writing and the result showed that clustering technique could bring students from the low standard to enough standard in descriptive writing score. On the contrary,
this previous study also observed the preparation of the English teacher in delivering the material of English. In fact, the teacher did not use any technique to
help students in writing descriptive text but when clustering technique was applied, the students’ descriptive writing was significantly improved. It can be
concluded from the relevant studies that the studen ts’ writing had improved and
the use of clustering technique in writing descriptive text was effective to generate and organize the ideas.
E. Conceptual Framework
