Improving Learners' Errors in Work Immersion Narratives through Error Correction Diary (ECD)

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Writing is a multifaceted task involving many component skills. Students' writing problems may be because they failed to master some of these skills completely or partially learned them. As a result, their written outputs may be unsatisfactory. Thus, students must acquire component skills, practice integrating them, and know when to apply what they have learned (Ocepek, M.G., 2012). The purpose of this research is to address the common writing errors committed by SHS students in their written narrative report of the activities they performed during the 80-hour immersion and to determine the impact of ECD in enhancing their writing fluency.

METHODS

A quasi-experimental method, specifically the One-group Pretest-Posttest design was employed. Twenty-three respondents, who finished their work immersion in January, had written their journal entries in English and have access to the internet were chosen using a purposive sampling technique. The 10-day written narratives, a total of 230 essays, of the respondents were checked by the researcher to determine the errors committed. After, the researcher conducted 10 sessions to address the errors committed. In each session, respondents were asked to write in their diaries the identified errors, the right way to write it and the reason it's a mistake. As a post-session activity, the respondents were instructed to write their day's experience and post it in Facebook's MyDay every day which the researcher took a screenshot for checking.

RESULTS

Findings revealed that the five most common writing errors committed by the respondents are comma splicing, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, verb tenses, and pronoun confusion. Results also indicated that there is a significant difference in the percentage of errors committed by the respondents before and after the intervention activity.

DISCUSSIONS

The current study affirms that writing practices affect students' writing fluency. Moreover, the ECD, as an intervention activity, helped the respondents to identify their writing errors and correct them. But Facebook's MyDay, which was their medium for their post-session writing activities, enthused them to share their writings, challenged them to write better and thrilled them for they can add pictures. It is therefore recommended to conduct another study that will zero-in to MyDay as an avenue for narrative writing. Further, this only covers the errors in structure and failed to include the concerns about the contents which is another area to research.