Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Learning English is not as easy as it seems, because there are four skills that should be learned such as listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Not only should those skills be learned, but also the structure of sentence or grammar. Those four skills cannot be gained easily; students must practice it regularly, especially in learning writing because writing is the most difficult skill from those skills; the students should know about range of vocabulary, the use of it, grammatical structure, and so on. In other words teaching writing is important because it could train students to explore their mind and ability in English from which they have learned with their teacher. Writing is a productive skill because when writing something it means they have made a language product from their mind to be expressed or poured in paper. In writing, although the students only need to express their ideas into a paper, it is not easy to make a good writing because it needs many requirements. From the explanation above, it could be concluded that writing is a process of pouring an idea, thought, concept for producing a text based on what the people want to write. Traditionally, writing can be done by using pencil, pen, marker, and paper, but now it also can be done by using technology such as cell phone, laptop, computer, and so on. Even though writing could be done by those media, the most important part in writing is the process of pouring idea, thought, and concept into a language structure. In writing, everyone is being asked to write something that they wanted to. Of course it needs their ability to write it. The writing ability of everyone is different from each other, not all people could write as easily as others. Sometimes they need more time to write the idea that they want to and they also need some courage to write them down. Writing is one of the important skills to be mastered by the students, because it can express their ideas, feeling and emotional. In Indonesia, English becomes one of the languages that should be learned in Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary education. The example from Secondary is senior high school. Moreover, English also becomes a foreign language tested in UN, National Examination. As stated in school based on curriculum or Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan KTSP, students of secondary schools are expected to develop their English in all language skills; they are listening, speaking, reading and writing. It means that writing becomes one of skills that also should be learned, such as on Competency Standard- Standard Kompetensi SK and Basic Competency- Kompetensi Dasar KD, the first year students of Senior High School are expected to be able to express meaningful ideas in term of functional text and simple short essay in the form of recount, narrative, and procedure to interact with people in their nearest environment. 1 It means the senior high students need to learn how to produce good recount writing. Here, there should be a good relation in English teaching and learning to develop students’ skill in writing English. Based on the researcher ’s experience especially for students who are in senior high school; it seems so difficult for some of them to express their idea on paper. Their difficulties in writing are how to generate and organize their ideas into writing; they are confused to start writing. But again based on the researcher ’s experience as a teacher during doing Integrated Teaching Practice Program PPKT in SMA AL-HASRA Depok, some of the first year students think that writing is a boring and difficult lesson because sometimes the students do not know how to write good sentences, and it makes them unenthusiastic in writing especially in writing recount text. Moreover, in writing recount text, changing present form into past form is one of the difficult things to do. Also they are unable to make good writing because they are sometimes confused about how to make well-structured writing. A recount text usually retells the past events and the students must use tenses that have the 1 Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan, Standar Kompetensi dan Kompetensi Dasar SMAMA, Jakarta: 2006, p. 128 function to tell story in past form in their writing. They have to choose the correct tenses and they also should know range of vocabulary. Here, the English teacher also seldom gives writing exercise to the students, because the English teacher pays more attention in reading. So, the students do not get enough exercise for writing. In addition, the researcher chose recount text because it is usually presented in senior high school, it also includes in the purpose of English learning in senior high school. Beside those things, b asic freedom “freedom to say what they think and feel, freedom to choose and err, freedom from interruption, and freedom from fear ” 2 is a thing that the students should have because writing is not as easy as it seems to be. Based on the researcher’s experience by interviewing her students during Integrated Teaching Practice Program PPKT, they are seldom given writing recount text exercise by their teacher in school. Even though they are asked to write something, the teacher does not use any technique that can help them write easily. Here, the researcher uses clustering technique to make the students easier in making draft for their writing. Because in clustering technique, students could organize their idea by using lines, boxes, arrows and so on to show the relation of their ideas and details of a writing topic. 3 By organizing their ideas into an interesting shape it is hoped that students could be more interested in writing recount text. Moreover, there is no right or wrong in clustering technique, because it only shows how ideas and details relate to one another that to be expressed into the paper. Through clustering exercise, it is hoped that it can help students to have more courage and confidence in writing. Based on the introduction above, the researcher is interested in observing the effectiveness of clustering technique on stu dents’ skill in recount writing, because clustering technique does not need too many requirements in writing, it also gives a clear picture to the students about a topic related to each other, and it is hoped can be applied quite easily especially for the first year students in senior high in 2 William F. Irmscher, Ways of Writing, United States of America: McGraw-Hill: 1969, p. 2 3 John Langan, English Skills seventh edition¸New York: McGraw-Hill:2001, p.22 writing recount text; they just need to share their words about their past experience that related to the topic into some shapes. For that reasons, the researcher chooses “The Effectiveness of Clustering Technique on Students’ Writing Recount Text of the First Grade at SMA AL-HASRA Depok ” as the title of this “Skripsi”.

B. Identification of the Problem