IMPROVING STUDENTS’ DESCRIPTIVE WRITING ACHIEVEMENT BY USING CLUSTERING TECHNIQUE AT SMA IBA PALEMBANG

Abstract

This study aimed to find whether there was a significant improvement in students’ descriptive writing achievement and whether there was a significant difference between students taught with the clustering technique and those not. A quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test non-equivalent was used in this study. Forty students were sampled, with 20 students from X.1 as the experimental class and 20 students from X.2 as the control class. The analysis results showed the p-output of the paired sample t-test was 0.000 and the t-output was -9.109, indicating a significant improvement. Then, the result of the independent sample t-test was 0.005 which is lower than 0.05 with a t-output of 2.999, which indicates there was a significant difference. Based on the results of this study, the researcher suggests that clustering techniques can be implemented as one of the appropriate techniques for improving students’ descriptive writing achievement.