INTRODUCTION
Writing is one of the five important macro-skills that the learners must possess, and it is also considered as one of the difficult skills that an individual can master. This skill helps learners to become independent, intelligible, fluent, and creative. It enables learners to put their thoughts in meaningful forms and to cognitively tackle the message in the right manner.
As an important component of communication (Wilson, 2018), and a multifaceted activity (Ling, 2016), writing involves a series of steps such as brainstorming of ideas, organizing, and sequencing these ideas, revising, and editing to have a well-written output. In addition to these steps, a well-written text must be logical, interesting, unified, clearly structured, and properly organized with an extensive range of vocabulary and mastery of conventions in mechanics. This makes writing challenging; thus, it calls for a concern.
Effective writing skills are fundamental both in higher education and the world of work. According to Geiser & Studley, 2001, one’s ability to compose an extended text is a predictor of success in the course work during the freshman year. The specific areas in writing which should be given emphasis include grammar rules, syntactical sentence structure, proper usage of punctuation marks, correct spelling and capitalization, the development of the content and the overall organization of composition are the specific areas that should be given emphasis. Communication in schools and in the workplaces in the form of letters, emails, memos, reminders, reports, statements, announcements, records, observations, accounts, and documents require writing skills so that smooth flow of communication of ideas, opinions, thoughts, plans and other important matters is attained. In line with this, college students must be well-equipped and skilled for writing has been taught at home and in school, from the elementary level up to tertiary level.
Writing skills allow people to communicate messages with precision, exactness, correctness, efficiency, and accuracy. This necessitates educational institutions to offer students adequate practice and proper instruction in writing since the basic objective of the school is to teach students writing, and to enhance their writing skills; however, that objective of many schools is not attained because there are available evidences that indicated that only a few and not all students developed their writing skills and students did not receive the proper writing instruction and training that they need (Graham, 2019).
A very alarming result of the 2019 study of Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), with a support from the Australian Council for Educational Research, revealed that only 1% of the Grade 5 Filipino learners had higher levels of proficiency in terms of writing and it indicated that these learners were those who have good range of vocabulary and have the ability to write cohesive texts with organized ideas (BusinessWorld, 2020). Furthermore, 45% of these learners were in the lowest group which indicated that they have limited ability to present ideas in writing. If an intervention program in writing is not done, these elementary students will eventually attend tertiary education with limited skills in writing.
According to Fareed & Almas (2016), teacher-factor and student-factor are the roots of poor writing skills. Teachers’ insufficient appropriate pedagogic approach in teaching writing and inability to motivate students has a big impact on students’ capacity to write. Furthermore, students’ lack of motivation to write due to poor reading skills, insufficient knowledge in vocabulary, grammar and mechanics, and the difficulty in translating the first language (Filipino) to second language (English) have a big impact on their writing skills. This is supported by a study done by Pablo and Lasaten (2018) which concluded that Grade 11 Filipino students had difficulties in writing academic essays due to poor content and incoherent connectives.
To overcome this issue, grammar and syntax, vocabulary, mechanics, paragraph organization and coherence must be addressed and given emphasis especially when teaching writing lessons. Furthermore, teachers must teach and highlight the link among the macro-skills while teaching English so that writing is not neglected. Learned and skilled tertiary students are proficient in English language usage and possess writing skills that indicate a better job opportunity; hence, writing must be given emphasis in the teaching-learning process.
The main purpose of the study was to assess the writing skills of BSED and BEED sophomore students of Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Pasig. Furthermore, it sought to determine the demographic profile of the respondents in terms of age, sex, and program, their level of the writing skills in terms of content, grammar and syntax, mechanics, word choice, and organization, and the significant difference on the writing skills of the respondents according to their program. Since writing skills are not learned and acquired overnight, a well-planned and in-depth writing intervention program must be utilized. An intervention program with the use of Student Writing Skills Intervention Material (SWIM) was proposed to improve the writing skills of the students.
The study has adopted the Writing Rope of Sedita in 2019 who believed that writing consists of several components that make up skilled writing such as: (1) Critical Thinking which concerns the background knowledge about the topic on how to communicate in writing and the awareness of individual on the writing process; (2) Syntax which covers the sentence structure of the writing that contributes to make meaning; (3) Text Structure which deals with the organization of the text; (4) Writing Craft which deals with the strategies of the writer like word choice; and (5) Transcription which deals with the spelling and handwriting or keyboarding skills needed to transcribe words and thoughts. For Sedita (2019), writing skill is in accordance with the other skills like reading, but teachers on reading instruction cannot explain or identify components of skilled writing, its writing assessments and effective curriculum for teaching writing. Hence, the Writing Rope Model would be helpful to promote robust discussion and writing instruction (Sedita, 2019).
METHODOLOGY
This study provides a systematic assessment and analysis of the writing skills of the PLPasig’s sophomore Education students. The researchers made use of the descriptive method of research as it allows for scientific investigation to describe the current conditions and the nature of a situation as it exists at the time of the study and to explore the course of a particular phenomenon. To establish the level of the writing skills of the PLPasig's sophomore Education students, an examination type of survey questionnaire was used to gather information.
The researchers used an essay examination as the primary data-gathering instrument in this study. The instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire adapted from the study conducted by Antonio, Guevarra, Perigrino, Santos, and Tabora (2021). The essay questionnaire was composed of one topic sentence for the respondents to answer which underwent experts’ validation from four teaching pedagogy experts and of English language to make the instrument reliable.
This study took place at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Pasig in the Second Semester of Academic Year 2020-2021 and First Semester of Academic Year 2021-2022. There were 118 enrolled students for the first year level in the Second Semester of Academic Year 2020-2021 for the four programs of the College of Education. Out of the said population, 91.53 % or 108 became the respondents for this study.
In order to check the essay output, the rubrics from the same authors were utilized to assess the writing skills of the respondents. The rubrics contain four scales: poor, fair, good, and excellent. It has five categories on areas of writing which was used by the five raters who are English majors’ graduates, Licensure Examination Passers and are teachers from different high school and college institutions. This helped the study to determine the level of the writing skills of each respondent and their essay as a whole. For better results and reliable interpretation of the collected data, the researchers used frequency, percentage, average mean, and Kruskal-Wallis Test as the statistical treatment for this study.
RESULTS
Based on the results of this study, the researchers have come up with the following findings:
In terms of demographic profile, majority of the student-respondents are 19 years old which indicates that majority of them are within the age bracket for a second year college level; 74.6% of the respondents are female while 16.9% are male; 85 sophomore students are enrolled in the program of Bachelor in Secondary Education while 33 students are in the Bachelor in Elementary Education program; out of the 85 BSED students, 37 of them are taking up the English major, 35 of them are in Filipino major, and only 13 are enrolled in Mathematics major, the 33 BEED students are generalists and have no specialization.
In terms of the level of the writing skills, the BEED student-respondents had a very good skill level in the five elements based on their scores in the essay output which is 76.142 that indicates that they have a Very Good writing skill level in general; and among these elements, they scored highest in Mechanics with a mean score of 15.636, and lowest score in Grammar and Syntax with a mean score of 14.869. Furthermore, the BSED student-respondents had a very good skill level in the five elements with an essay output of 75.833 which indicates that they have a Very Good writing skill level in general; and among these elements, they scored highest in Mechanics with a mean score of 15.710, and the lowest score was Organization with a mean score of 14.768.
The result of the computation also indicated that there is no significant difference in the writing skills of the Education student-respondents according to their program which garnered a p-value of 0.3689 that is higher than 0.05 significance level. Thus, the null hypothesis is accepted.
DISCUSSION
Though the result of the study on both BEED and BSED sophomore garnered a ‘Very Good’ writing skill level, the researchers propose to conduct an intervention program, a kind of remedial session, with the use of intervention material about writing for the following reasons: (a) even though the result of the study indicated very good level in terms of the writing skills, the students must attain an excellent level, because mistakes in grammar and syntax, word choice and mechanics are not acceptable in terms of writing. Correct grammar, proper word choice and mechanics are important in written communications, hence it must be mastered by the students; and (b) though writing is a difficult skill, students should be skillful in terms of organization of ideas because it affects the flow of the content. They must write in a well-arranged and systematic manner; thus, they must be competent in using cohesive devices and connectors to achieve coherent, unified, and sound written output.
There are specific areas in writing which should be given emphasis and that includes grammar rules, syntactical sentence structure, proper usage of punctuation marks, correct spelling and capitalization, the development of the content and the overall organization of writing it in one composition. In addition to that, one’s good grammar and proper sentence structures should be combined with wide range of vocabulary to establish writing skills (Alfaki, 2015). These areas are important to achieve a full understanding of communication. Content is affected by grammar rules, sentence structure, proper usage of punctuation marks, correct spelling and capitalization, and organization. Lack of knowledge with one area impacts the other areas in writing.
The researchers also recommend that college students must be exposed to different kinds of writing such as creative, technical, and academic writings for them to be equipped and expert in their field as educators.
Students should practice and enhance their writing skills. Teachers in English should provide writing activities that incorporate other macro skills to stabilize the students’ ability, to be able to apply their writing knowledge and skills to different areas, and to strengthen their confidence in practicing their profession. This can be done with the help of an intervention program, or by providing different writing tasks or activities. Thus, faculty members who handle English subjects are advised to utilize varied writing activities that can enhance the knowledge and skills of the students in terms of writing for them to develop positive attitude towards writing; thus, preparing them to be globally competitive teachers in the future. The PLP administration must extend its utmost support to the College of Education in terms of conducting a Writing Intervention Program that will cater BSED and BEED students to enhance their writing skills.
In general, writing is a complex process that should not be neglected by soon-to-be teachers; thus, the researchers have created a workbook based on the proposed intervention program to improve the writing skills of the sophomore Education students. The program covered 5-week training on writing mechanics and writing process, and the last day was engaged in Seminar-Workshop on Writing with the theme, “Writing Skills: From Mind to Paper”.