IMPROVING THE GRADE 8 STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT

Abstract

This research was intended to describe how the use of clustering technique could improve the Grade 8 students’ active participation and their achievement in writing a recount text at SMPN 1 Balung. The design of this research was a classroom action research which was consisted of the planing of the action, the implementation of the action, the observation and evaluation, and the data analysis and reflection. The subjects of this research were the Grade 8 students of SMPN 1 Balung, especially class 8 C. The number of the students in this class were 36 students. The data collection methods used in this research ; they were primary data and supporting data.The primary data were taken from observation and vocabulary test, while the supporting data were taken from interview and documentation. The primary data were analyzed quantitatively by using the percentage formula.. The results showed the improvement in each cycle. In Cycle 1, the results of the observation showed that 66.66% of the students in meeting I and 72.22% of the students in meeting II actively participated during the teaching learning process. Besides, the result of the writing test showed that there were 69.44% of the students got score ≥75. Meanwhile, in Cycle 2, The result of the observation increased from 77.77% of the students in meeting 1 to 83.33% of the students in meeting 2 actively participated during the teaching learning process, while the result of the writing test was 77.77% of the students got score ≥75. Based on the result of the research, it was concluded that use of clustering technique could improve the Grade 8 students’ achivement in writing a recount text.