Writing Skills of Grade 7 Students in Selected Public Secondary Schools of Taysan District: Basis for Enrichment Activities

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Writing skill difficulties are one of the most significant problems that affect students. The fact that the latter do not have interest in composition leads them to become poor writers, have low scores in their courses, increase the errors in their homework, write run-on sentences and create incoherent paragraphs. Many students have learned in high school to camouflage their lack of reading and writing skills, so it is often difficult for teachers to identify their weaknesses until students submit their papers or take exams. For this reason, it is important to say that academic writing involves many requirements that students must put into practice to avoid difficulties and complications.

METHODS

The input variables such as the profile of the respondents, performance of the students in writing and their difficulties comprised the, ideas and resources used in the study. The researcher conducted a survey and documentary analysis using the self-constructed questionnaires to analyze the writing skills of the students through composition writing. The researchers also conducted unstructured interviews with the teachers and focus group discussion with Grade 7 students. Lastly, this study aims to develop the writing skills of the students through enhancement activities.

RESULTS

Most of the Grade 7 students are within the range of 11 to 13 years old and have a family income of 3,000 pesos and below. The final grades of the Grade 7 students when they were Grade 6 were merely average and most of the students liked to write songs. The general performance of the student in writing is 56 % which is average or satisfactory. Students often have difficulty in Subject-Verb Agreement, and constructing topic sentence, and often have limited knowledge of sentence structure, linkers, connectors, vocabulary. On the other hand, students seldom have poor performance in spelling, using punctuation marks, hand writing skills.

DISCUSSIONS

Based on the observation by the researcher in the academic environment, it seems that most of the students have very basic understanding in the area of writing. Factors contributing to poor writing skills of students include lack of interest, inadequate teaching/learning materials, and lack of motivation. Improving on these factors could improve performance of the students in writing. There is still room for improvement on how to inculcate knowledge to the students and the teacher must be flexible enough to adjust based on the needs of the students.