CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

In this part, the chapter discusses the matters related to the application of

clustering technique in improving students’ English composition and some previous

studies. It covers the teaching of English writing, pre-writing, clustering technique,

the process of clustering and the advantages of using clustering technique.

A. The Theoretical Background of Study

1. The Teaching of English Writing

English writing is a part of language teaching in which it also

functions as an essential tool for learning in which most of students in the

world expand their knowledge of the language elements in real use. As stated

by Ploeger, it is an act of discovering what the writer knows and feels about

something and communicating that knowledge to the reader.1 This means that

English writing is an opportunity to express something, explain, explore ideas

and assess the claims of other people.

In educational purpose, writing is very useful for second-language

learners to obtain competence and functional skills.2 It is supported by Harmer

that writing is one of the compulsory subjects in junior and senior high school

1
K.M. Ploeger, Simplified Paragraph Skills, (Lincolnwood: NTC Publishing Group, 2000),73
2
Kenneth Chastain, Developing Second-Language Skills: Theory to Practice, (USA: Rand McNally
College Publishing Company, 1976),363

8
 9

level.3 Therefore, English is one of the subjects included in the national exams

for secondary schools in Indonesia. In addition, it still holds an important

place in examinations in school life.

As an important skill, the goal in writing is twofold. 4 The immediate

goal is to develop the students’ ability to write to the point at which written

homework assignments can be given. Psychologically, students are more

impressed by exercises that are to be written and handed in than by those that

are to be learned. By writing, students are able easily to pervade and

understand the knowledge that what they have written. Realistically, the

teacher knows that writing homework exercises and other written activities

help the students to acquire the vocabulary and the grammar of the lesson. It

means that the most students can internalize vocabulary and structure through

writing. In particular, the English writing plays important roles in the global

era where people are required to be able to communicate in an international

extent.

In addition, in concerning teaching of writing in the secondary school

level in Indonesia, the presentation of writing is integrated with the other

skills. For instance, reading instruction lead discussion structure of reading

passage. After reading activity, the students are assigned to develop an essay

3
J. Harmer, How to Teach Writing, (England: Pearson Education Limited, 1988), 31
4
Kenneth Chastain, Developing Second-Language Skills………364
 10

based on the structure that they have gotten in reading activity. In a short, the

more students read, the more fluently they will write.

2. Pre-Writing

In the learning of writing students can focus on the product of that writing

or on the writing process itself.5 To get a product of writing or a better

composition, students are faced on the process of writing. Meanwhile, in the

process of writing students will focus on generating ideas and organizing the

writing coherently (prewriting stage), revising text, editing grammar and

producing a final product.6

Similarly, Harmer classified the process into: (1) prewriting, (2)

drafting, (3) revising, (4) editing, (5) publishing.

a. Prewriting

Prewriting is a way to get started to write which includes activities

of finding topics, generating ideas, planning content and organization.

This study focused on this initial stage of writing. This activity requires

the student to gather, obtain, or develop ideas for the writing successfully.

In other sides, it describes some techniques that will help thinking

and developing a topic and getting words on paper: free writing,

5
Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching (4th edition), (New York: Pearson
Longman, 2007), 286.
6
H. Douglas Brown, Teaching by Principles. (New York: Pearson Longman, 2001), 335.
 11

questioning, making list, clustering, and preparing scratch outline7.

Nevertheless, this study focuses on clustering technique.

b. Drafting

Drafting is a kind of practice exercise for the final draft. A draft is

based on the planned ideas made in prewriting activity. In drafting, the

writer elaborates our ideas in complete sentences and paragraphs. If the

first draft is not a perfect so the writer need to do revision.

c. Revising

Revising means evaluation of the draft that has been made. In

revising, the draft may decide to move, delete, or add words, sentences,

paragraphs, that will complete and improve the content writing.

d. Editing

Editing can be done systematically which means the writer pays

attention to the correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization.

Also, this activity is time consuming and need patience to identify the

mechanical errors.

e. Publishing

Publishing is an activity of sharing the finished writing with

others. The final writing can be published after qualifying preceding

processes or stages of writing

7
Ibid, 18.
 12

3. Clustering Technique

This research focuses on prewriting activity through clustering

technique. Clustering also known as diagramming, webbing concept or

mapping is a technique that can be used to help students’ composition. It is

supported by Oshima and Hogue, on their book “Introduction to Academic

Writing”, who states that Clustering is a prewriting activity used by writers to

produce ideas.8 The ideas often end up in an outline of what will be written

while this technique causes students to pay attention to their thoughts. In

addition, clustering requires the student to gather, obtain, or develop ideas for

the writing successfully.

However, some teachers do not feel comfortable with clustering. It

happens because clustering is time consuming. Both teacher and students

should provide times to implement and maintain clustering. It is important for

the teacher and students to work, organize, and develop regularly with

clustering ideas into some paragraphs. To make clustering effective, it must be

kept organized and current. Thus, time is needed in composing with

clustering.9

4. The Process of Clustering

8
Alice Oshima and Ann Hogue, Introduction to Academic Writing,( New York: Addison Wesley
Longman, 1997 ), 48.
9
Sue C. Wortham. Assessment in Early Childhood Education, (New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall,
2005), 223.
 13

Tilaar also describes that clustering is created around a single word or

text placed in the centre, to which associated ideas, words and concepts are

added.10 It can also be a tool to gather vocabulary in the students’ mind.

Furthermore, clustering is also a way to get started to write which includes

activities of finding topics, generating ideas, planning content and

organization. Clustering according to Gary Tate is a visual way to look at your

ideas and relate them to each other.11 In brief, administering clustering can

stimulate writer especially students to generate and organize ideas.

As pre-writing stage, the processes of clustering started by writing the

topic in the middle of page and circle it. The next step is writing down some

ideas that are in mind and putting them in boxes or circles then connect to

previous word with a line. At the end of clustering, the design of all ideas

presented.12 Also, in this technique, there is no right or wrong way of

clustering. Below is the example of clustering.

10
Prof. Dr. H.A.R. Tilaar, M.Sc.Ed, Media Pembelajaran Aktif, (Bandung: Nuansa, 2010), 72.
11
Gary Tate, Teaching Composition: 10 Bibliographical Essays, (Texas: Texas Christian University
Press, 1976), 17.
12
Roberta Moore, et. al., writing with a purpose, (New Jersey: Cambridge Adult Education, 1996), 14
 14

Sub
Sub
Topic

Sub
Sub

Figure 2.1 an example of clustering developed

5. The Advantages of Using Clustering

From the processes of clustering, there are some advantages of using

clustering technique. Firstly has been stated by Langan that clustering can

generate ideas for the important information students have in mind.13 This

means that this technique helps the students to express all ideas as much as

they have. Then, organizing is important to compose the whole ideas into

good composition of writing, so the product of writing can ease the reader to

understand.14 Also, Pica defines it is one of creative techniques that motivates

and interests students to avoid boredom in composing.15 In other sides,

clustering allows students to focus on their thought as much as possible.

13
John Langan, College Writing Skills, (New York: McGraw Hill, 2005),12.
14
Joy M.Reid, Teaching ESL Writing, (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993), 6.
15
T. Pica. An Interactional Approach to the Teaching of Writing. (English Teaching Forum, 1986), 17.
 15

Hence, it is also adaptable and understandable for all ages of students than the

other pre-writing stages.16

B. Previous Studies

Clustering sometimes referred as mind mapping or concept mapping, that

an effective strategy or technique to help students generate ideas. Also, it is easy

to do and understandable. Therefore, there have been many research conducted

on the area.

This previous study is reviewed to avoid an imitation. Hence, there are

some previous studies intended to enrich or increase students’ writing ability by

using clustering technique. They are presented as follows

The first research was conducted by Tintin Sumartini, State University of

Surabaya entitles “Clustering as Prewriting Technique in Teaching Descriptive

Text”. The research problems were: (1) how does clustering technique use as

prewriting technique in teaching writing descriptive text? (2) how is the result of

writing descriptive text after using clustering? This study was conducted using

descriptive qualitative method at the seventh grade of Junior High School. The

data were taken from observing and describing the classroom. The findings of the

study revealed that in the 2nd and 3rd observation, students had high improvement

of using clustering technique in content, language use, vocabulary, and

mechanic. In a short, after using clustering as pre-writing technique, most of the

16
John Langan, Teaching ESL Writing, (New Jersey: McGraw Hill, 2005),13
 16

students were motivated and interested to learn writing especially in English.

Therefore, the use of clustering can minimize students’ difficulties, faced in

English writing.

A similar study was conducted by Farah Mustika Sari, State University of

Surabaya entitles “Clustering Technique in Teaching Writing at Junior High

School”. There were two research questions, (1) how is clustering technique used

as prewriting activity to teach narrative text? (2) what is the result of students’

composition by using clustering technique? The research focused on clustering

used in narrative text to the second grade of junior high school. This research

also was also descriptive qualitative research. The data were taken from

observing and describing the classroom that include teachers’ activity, students’

composition, and students’ activities during the observation. On the 2nd

observation it was found out that most students got either good or very good

scores in content, organization, and vocabulary. Meanwhile, the result of

students’ composition on the 3rd observation showed that more than a half of the

students got either good or very good scores contents, organization, and also

vocabulary. By looking at the result of the students’ composition especially in

contents and vocabulary, it shows that the clustering could help them to gather

the ideas for writing their composition. Besides, based on results of students’

composition in organization, it shows that clustering technique could help

students to organize their thoughts to write an English narrative composition. The

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study concluded that the use of clustering could help the students to gather and

organize ideas in composing English narrative text.

Another study was conducted by Devi Marliasari, State University of

Malang. The title of the study is “Using Clustering Technique to Improve the

Senior High School Students’ Abilities in Generating Ideas for Writing

Analytical Exposition”. This study was aimed at determining the senior high

school students’ difficulties at SMA Negeri 8 Malang especially on confusion on

how to start writing. The research problems were (1) “how can clustering

technique improve the students’ ability in generating ideas for writing analytical

exposition (2) how are the students’ responses to the implementation of

clustering technique? This study was a classroom action research. The findings

of this study show that students’ participation was increased, and it was followed

by the improvement of the students’ performance in English writing. The

improvement can be seen in the mean scores of content and organization. In the

implementation of the action, the students’ mean score on content was 2.27 and

increased into 2.62. Meanwhile, the students’ mean score on organization also

increased from 2.20 to 2.63.

The next study was conducted by Indra Pratiwi 2010, State University of

Malang, entitles “the implementation of webbing concept to improve seventh

graders’ performance in writing descriptive text at SMPN 13 Malang”. The

research problem was how do the students generate and develop their ideas. This

research used collaborative action research (CCAR) which was conducted in two
 18

cycles consisting two meetings in each cycles. The findings of the research show

that webbing concept successfully improved the seventh grades’ performance in

English writing descriptive text especially in terms of content, organization, and

language use.

Novi Rahmania Aquariza also conducted at research entitles “Using Mind

Mapping In Teaching Speaking Skills at RSBI Class SMA Negeri I Sidoarjo”.

The subject of the study was the first grade students of RSBI class at SMA

Negeri 1 Sidoarjo in 2009. There were three research problems of this study. (1)

What are the materials used in the teaching speaking skills using mind mapping

at RSBI class, SMA Negeri 1 Sidoarjo? (2) How did the teacher implement mind

mapping in teaching speaking skills at RSBI class, SMA Negeri 1 Sidoarjo? And

(3) what are the problems of using mind mapping in teaching speaking skills at

RSBI class, SMA Negeri 1 Sidoarjo? The research used descriptive qualitative

design. The result of the research shows that using mind mapping in teaching

speaking was so helpful to regulate students’ ideas and stimulates the group

presenter to extend the statement using their own words, while praise and

congratulation as their materials. It was interesting for the students, because of its

simple form and it is relatively easy to be understood. To gain an effective

teaching speaking using mind mapping, students got reference or hand out from

the teacher related to the material praise and congratulation. While to avoid

boredom in learning, teacher has way to implement mind mapping in teaching

speaking in turn: using whole class-whiteboard as the media and using group
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work presentation-power point as media. Those are intended to enrich their

knowledge and linguistic view.

From those successes previous studies, this research also uses clustering to

emphasize whether clustering technique also can be effective in MTs Raudlatul

Ulum as pioneered school for students aim in rural area. To contribute a new

finding, this research conducted a study about “the effectiveness of clustering

technique in teaching writing at MTs Raudlatul Ulum”. This research focused on

the eighth grade students. In the research, there was merely one research question

“is clustering technique more effective than traditional technique?” with

experiment design which consists of one experimental and one control classes.