1

“WRITTEN COMMUNICATION SKILLS OF AB ENGLISH STUDENTS:

BASIS FOR ENHANCEMENT PROGRAM”

A Thesis

Presented to the Thesis Committee,

Department of Arts and Sciences Education

UM Tagum College, Tagum City

In Partial Fulfilment

Of the Requirements for the Degree

Bachelor of Arts in English

RAHSEL M. ECMATAN

RACHEL SEREÑO

March 2020
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Page

TITLE PAGE I

APPROVAL SHEET Ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENT iii

DEDICATION V

ABSTRACT vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

LIST OF TABLES X

LIST OF FIGURES xi

Chapter

1 INTRODUCTION

Rationale 1

Research Objective 2

Review of Related Literature 3

Theoretical Framework 19

Conceptual Framework 21

Significance of the Study 21

Definition of Terms 23

2 METHODS

Research Design 24

Research Locale 25

Population and Sample 26

Research Instrument 26

Data Collection 27
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Chapter 1

Introduction

Rationale

Writing skills are an essential component of literacy, students

need to be proficient writers to participate in our literate society. The

National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading

Association (1996) have stated that the literacy requirements of our

society are increasing and are expected to continue rising.

Writing is an extremely complex activity in which the writer is

required to demonstrate control of variable simultaneously. Strong

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writing skills may enhance student's chances for success. Writing is

an essential factor of language. Good writing skills are needed for all

students in order to accomplish their educational and employment

requirements.

In Pakistan, the major problem on their undergraduate ESL

learners in writing are insufficient linguistic proficiency (including

command over grammar, syntax and vocabular), writing anxiety, lack

of ideas and weak structure organization. These challenges are

influenced by various factors including untrained teachers, ineffective

teaching methods and examination system, lack of reading and

writing practice, large classrooms, low motivation and lack of ideas.

We as the researchers across the study about written

communication skills pf AB-English students in UM Tagum College as

the basis for enhancement program to persuade to look and study as

this can be an awareness to the intended beneficiaries of this study

and possibly develop an action plan in school administration,

therefore, it is need to conduct a study.

Research Objectives

This study we will be conducted to determine the influence of

Written Cmmunication Skills of AB English Students in University of

Mindanao Tagum College.

Particularly, this sought to answer to the following questions:

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1. To describe the level of Written Communication Skills of AB

English students in terms of:

1.1 Spelling

1.2 Sentence Construction

1.3 Grammar

1.4 Vocabulary

2. To design an enhancement program based on the result of

the communication skills of AB English Students.

Hypothesis

The following hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of

significance:

1. The level of Written Communication skills and the level of

basis for enhancement program among AB English

students will be more effiecient to determine the influence

of written communication skills .

2. The writing communication skills and basis for

enhancement program will be more effective in tracing the

level of written communication skills among AB English

students..

Review of Related Literature

This review of literature comprises information from various sources

such as peer-viewed articles, studies, and books on concepts related

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to writing communication skills and enhancement program. This

section is organized under the above-mentioned headings.

Writing Communication Skills

It is believed that writing is important and frequently used in

people’s daily lives either as individual such as writing application

letter, messages, and dissemination of the research results or member

of society such as in a workplace issues. Writing is also taught in

formal education considering the importance of having ability and

good skills of writing (Iftanti, E., 2016; Yi, J., 2009).

Huy (2015) states writing is “a complex metacognitive activity

that offers an individual’s knowledge:. Teaching writing in EFL context

is like an instructional process of studying a language in order to

improve vocabularies and punctuation usage, and writing often is

seen as process of exploration and discovery. As the result, writing

defines the written text and the act of constructing a written text.

Writers have to express ideas and communicate with the readers

through expressing words (Huy, N.T., 2015).

Haerazi and Irawan (2019) pointed out that writing is known as

a product skill after the speaking skill. Compared to speaking skill,

writing is a more powerful instrument for students to convey their

ideas, thoughts, feelings, or even judgements about what they have

seen and experienced. According to Westwood (2004) as cited by

Haerzi and Irawan (2019), writing is a highly complex process

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involving lmultiple brain mechanism and linguistic abilities. In

accordance with that, writing is a complex activity of the brain to

create ideas, words, sentences, paragraphs, and compositions

(Haerazi, H. & Irawan, L.A, 2019).

Moreover, written communication skills are perceived to be one

of the most important competencies for academic and career

performance, as is evident from higher education and workplace

stakeholder surveys. Focus on writing skills demonstrates the need for

next-generation writing ability tests to inform curriculum and

instructional enhancement (Sparks, J. R., Song, Y., Brantley, W., &

Liu, O. L., 2014).

Additionally, Writing skills include one of language skills that

involve active and productive abilities. Writing skills are an attempt to

express thoughts and feelings that exist in a person by promoting

language (Abbas, M. F. F. & Herdi, H., 2018). To achieve those efforts,

preservice teachers should have an ability to use word diction,

grammar, and writing mechanics including the use of capital letter,

spelling, and punctuation (Pabbajah, F. S. Utami, M. & Juhansar, J.,

2018).

Writing can be arranged into two types: functional and creative.

Functional writing refers to the type of writing that intended to convey

a specific, direct, and clear message to a particular audience

(Praminatih et al., 2019). It includes areas such as writing

instructions, letterheads, notes, invitations, reports and

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advertisements. On the other hand, creative writing is a form of

writing by which learners express their feelings, emotions, reactions,

and ideas in a great literary style (Viana, V. & Zyngier, S. 2019).

This kind of writing involves numerous genres such as writing

short stories, poems, plays, novels, articles and descriptions.

Fancourt, Garnett, Spiro, West, and Mullensiefen (2019) indicated

that creative writing can offer avenues of expression, build reading

and writing skills, as well as much-needed confidence in the

classroom. It strengthens connects among students and the

instructors who work with them. It also encourages self-expression,

cultivates confidence, upgrades relational abilities, and improves the

learners' trust in figuring out how to peruse and write in a foreign

language (Fancourt, D., Garnett, C., Spiro, N., West, R., &

Mullensiefen, D., 2019). Stephens (2018) referred that the greatest joy

of the teacher and the greatest hope for better world lies in the

cultivation of creative power. Creativity is the main source of

emergence and development of human culture (Stephens, G., 2018).

Another study conducted by Ismuwardani, Nuryatin, and Doyin

(2019), about imposing project based learning models to increased the

creativity and self-reliance of students on the skills in writing poetry.

The values indicator of creativity divided into three points which

are fleuncy, flexibelity, and originality. Students’ self reliance on

the skills of writing poetry after implementation of Project

Based Learning models contained in the high category. For the

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score of students on poetry writing skill shows a good increased

(Ismuwardani, Z., Nuryatin, A. & Doyin, M., 2019).

According to the study conducted by Yusuf and Jusoh (2019),

they have used cooperative learning methods in helping students

improve their writing skills. The students' writing were scored on the

five writing components, they are vocabulary, organization,

grammatical accuracy and mechanics. The results showed that the

students had increased in their writing scores from the pre-test to the

post-test after the application of cooperative learning in the class.

Subsequently, the results indicate positive effects of cooperative

learning in improving the writing skill of students at the school

(Yusuf, Q. & Jusoh, Z., 2019).

In the Philippine setting with the implementation of the k-12 in

the Philippines, a number of courses offered in the tertiary level have

been reduced and/or moved to the junior and senior high school

programs. Assuming that college students have learned the basics in

their previous school years, they can focus on the courses that will

make them competent in their future field of specialization. One area

that was affected by the reduction in the English course. English

course composes writing, reading, and speaking skills which are the

basic components that students must further develop before entering

college. According to Dacwag (2019) in her research found that

students have skills in writing, however, there are several structures

that were not clearly taught during the senior high school years
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leading to a lack of knowledge on how to write essays or such. Based

on these findings, it is recommended that the writing skills of the

students must be enhanced through separate and additional English

courses (Dacwag, C., 2019).

Additionally, in a study conducted by Gustillo (2016) aimed at

characterizing what skilled or more proficient ESL, college writing is in

the Philippine setting through a contrastive analysis of three groups of

variables identified from previous studies: resources, processes, and

performance of ESL writers. Writing performance was represented by

length of essay and writing fluency. Essay score, also a measure of

writing performance, was used to group the writers into less proficient

and more proficient writers. Results indicated that there are

significant differences between the two proficiency groups in content

knowledge, vocabulary, elaborative writing approach, school writing

experience and confidence in writing, and in all the measures of text

production processes. Due to methodological limitations, conclusions

made in the present study are restricted to the sample under study

and to the genre of writing selected (Gustillo, L., 2016).

Lastly, Haerazi and Irawan (2019) stated that writing is a time-

consuming practice and experience for students and even for

lecturers. Learning writing skills need to poster students with high

motivation and idea to practice their writing in order to enhance their

writing skills. Therefore, lecturers or any other methods that could

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help students improve their writing skills must be used and imposed

(Haerazi, H. & Irawan, L.A, 2019).

Spelling

Spelling is crucial to students’ success in reading and writing;

this is because word recognition and spelling both rely on similar

funds of knowledge. There are many solid research studies that agree

that spelling is foundational for reading as well as for writing (Kandel,

S. & Perrett, C., 2015; McCutcheon & Stull, 2015). Poor spelling can

cause dire consequences for struggling learners. Poor spellers are very

limited in their ability to communicate, since spelling plays a critical

role in reading and writing fluency, as well as in developing capacity

within students to become articulate speakers as pointed by Gentry

(2001) as cited by Al-Yahmedi, Al-Busaidi and Al-Seyabi (2019).

Students need a level of proficiency in spelling to continue their

academic or professional career in the future (Al-Yahmedi, Z., Al-

Busaidi, S. & Al-Seyabi, F., 2019).

According to Vaddapali (2012), as cited by Sheikha, Al-Bereiki,

and Al-Mehklafi (2015), some studies surveyed spelling problems with

tertiary students. It seems that most of these studies did not take into

consideration designing a program or applying an approach to

overcome spelling problems. There is a dearth of research that

investigates the efficacy of current methods of spelling instruction,

teachers’ perceptions about spelling, and how they currently handle

spelling instruction. He argued that the “lack of proper spelling

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instruction at schools and colleges” is one of the reasons behind the

spelling difficulties among learners which greatly affects the writing

skill of tertiary students (Sheikha A., Al-Bereiki, A., & Al-Mekhlafi, M.,

2015).

Furthermore, the study conducted by Ocal and Ehri (2017)

about spelling pronunciations for college students, shows that they

will apply to the college students if the strategy used in children

benefits from a spelling pronunciation strategy in remembering the

spellings of words. Strategy-trained adults recalled significantly more

words, total letters, silent letters, and schwa vowel letters correctly

than controls. Poor spellers benefited as much if not more from this

strategy as good spellers. Results support orthographic mapping

theories. Optimizing the match between spelling units and sound

units, including graphemes and phonemes, syllables, and

morphemes, to create spelling pronunciations when words are read

enhances memory for spellings of the words. As a result, higher-

quality lexical representations are retained in memory. Results

suggest the value of teaching college students this strategy to improve

their ability to spell words correctly in their written work and it would

greatly help improve their writing communication skills (Ocal, T. &

Ehri, L., 2017).

Additionally, an empirical research over the last 50 years have

shown that students are likely to progress with meaning-based

teaching methods under limited guidance; however, meaning-based

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approaches to teaching literacy have not proven as successful as

explicit teaching approaches. There is much evidence to suggest that

explicit instruction is an effective strategy to develop student word

level spelling skills. It is seen as essential by many researchers,

importantly, it can assist in accelerating learning to spell (Treiman, R.,

2018).

Moreover, in a study conducted by Graham and Santangelo

(2014) about spelling instruction, states that children’s spelling of

words improves when they read words in texts. However, the gains are

modest, as anyone who has read a word like necessary many times

but has trouble spelling it can attest. As a result, children who receive

systematic spelling instruction generally spell more successfully than

those who do not (Garaham, S. & Santangelo, T., 2014).

Lastly, learning correct spelling is important for several reasons:

First, misspellings can cause errors and difficulties in comprehension.

Second, readers may develop negative impressions of a writer’s

arguments if his prose contains misspelled words. And finally,

learning conventional spellings of words allows people to read the

words more quickly and concentrate on ideas rather than spelling

(Treiman, R., 2018).

Sentence Construction

Good sentence construction, the act of writing multiple words

into sentence types that make semantic and syntactic sense, is

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needed for clear and meaningful written expression. An significant

part of the educational experience is the opportunity to express

oneself through the writing. Students write to teachers to show their

expertise, and teachers use student writing to evaluate learning and

foster more interaction with academic content. (Datchuk, S.M. &

Rodgers, D.B., 2018).

According to Graham (2018), fluency with sentence construction

is thought to promote the growth of written expression by transferring

a key aspect of text production from working memory to long-term

memory; specifically, students with fluent sentence construction have

a readily available schema of how to fit ideas into semantic and

syntactic frames understandable to members of their writing

community (Graham, S., 2018).

Moreover, on the study conducted by Datchuk (2016) about the

the effects of a multicomponent intervention on the writing behavior of

adolescents with writing difficulties. A single-case design consisting of

a combination of multiple-probe design across participants and pre-

post test was used. The researchers used two intervention phase: (a)

sentence instruction and frequency building to a performance

criterion and (b) paragraph instruction. Results suggested a functional

relation between sequential delivery of intervention and gains in

accuracy and rate on sentence construction probes. Results provide

tentative support that the intervention improved writing on descriptive

paragraph probes (Datchuk, S.M., 2016).

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Furthermore, in a study conducted by Gracia, Crespo, and

Bermudez (2017) about analyzing the impact of transcription skills of

Spanish writers when writing an independently composed sentence

within a writing-level design. The free-writing sentence task from the

Early Grade Writing Assessment was used to examine the production,

accuracy, speed, syntactic complexity, quality, and fluency of children

with poor transcription skills. The results showed that there were

significant differences between children with poor transcription skills

and peers who had good transcription skills. The poor transcription

skills group members were less accurate, slower, and less fluent or

even dysfluent. Furthermore, their sentences were less complex and

contained lower-quality content. These results suggest that

transcription skills play a crucial role in early written expression in

Spanish, and poor transcription abilities hamper the acquisition and

normal development of sentence composition (Garcia, E., Crespo, P., &

Bermudez, I., 2017).

Additionally, a study conducted by Deveci(2019) about sentence

openers which are greatly an important factor in sentence

construction states that, sentence openers is a strategic use of which

helps authors develop an individual style, and avoid stagnant prose. It

helps them maintain readers' interest while communicating scientific

knowledge. Due to the importance of sentence openers in scientific

prose and sentence construction, university students' awareness

should be raised about this aspect of academic writing. This requires

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the identification of commonly occurring sentence openers in the texts

they study. It is also useful to identify student tendencies regarding

sentence openers and their perceived competence in varying sentence

openers. With regards to that, the result of the conducted study

showed that the two most frequent sentence openers in both corpora

were subject-verb and transition markers. However, the latter was

used by the students with significantly higher frequency than they

were by the professional writers. Data also revealed that the students

lack awareness of sentence openers as a feature for making writing

more interesting. Students further reported an inability to use a wide

range of sentence openers in their writing (Deveci, T., 2019).

Lastly, Garaham (2018) states that sentence construction is a

foundational skill needed for clear and effective communication within

one’s writing community. To aid communication and promote the

development of a proficient repertoire of written expression,

researchers recommend that students develop it to fluency.

Unfortunately, many students with academically related disabilities or

any memory issues, struggle to adequately develop sentence

construction (Graham, S., 2018).

Grammar
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There has been much debate over the role of grammar

instruction in the teaching of writing - whether grammar and writing

should be taught separately, or in an integrated manner in the

English Language (EL) writing class. Numerous studies have been

conducted on the relationship between explicit grammar teaching and

writing development. In general, studies which investigated the

discrete teaching of grammar and writing on writing development have

concluded that grammar instruction minimally benefits writing

development (Xavier, C.A, Hong, H.M. & Renandya W., 2020).

According to the study conducted by Xavier, Hong, and

Renandya (2020) generally, there are two views of grammar – a

prescriptive view and a descriptive view of grammar. The prescriptive

view of grammar focuses on the rules of grammar, and on how

language should be used. The attention is on the correctness, and

accuracy of grammar use. This prescriptive view of grammar

emphasizes the targeting of errors –whether in avoidance or

remediation. While, on the other hand, the descriptive view of

grammar focuses on how language is actually used, in different

contexts and settings. In contrast to the prescriptive view of grammar,

where the emphasis is on the accuracy of grammatical structures, the

descriptive view of grammar emphasizes grammatical choice – the

linguistic possibilities as also discussed by Richards and Rippens

(2014) (Xavier, C.A, Hong, H.M. & Renandya W., 2020).

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According to Celce-Murcia and Wonho, (2014), the reason

behind the learner’s problem with writing English may be the

conventional classrooms that impart grammar at a sentence level, not

at a discourse level. In traditional classroom teaching, grammatical

competence was marked by their ability to form grammatically correct

sentences and practical usage was not marked. Among several

language teaching approaches, discourse-based pedagogy is divergent

in the sense that it emphasizes grammar forms, their meaning and

usage in a larger discourse perspective (Celce-Murcia, M. & WonHo-

Yoo, I., 2014).

Most studies and reviews which have investigated the impact of

teaching of grammar and writing separately on writing development

have largely concluded that grammar instruction has minimal benefits

to writing development. For example, Andrews et al. (2004) as cited by

Xavier, Hong, and Renandya (2020) concluded after a systematic in-

depth review of ten studies of the effects of grammar teaching (in

particular, syntax) on writing development, that the teaching of syntax

has ―virtually no influence on the writing quality or accuracy of 5-16

year-olds‖. The study done by Bateman and Zidonis (1966) as cited by

Xavier, Hong, and Renandya (2020), for example, looked at the effects

of a transformational grammar course on language growth in

secondary school students, and came to the conclusion that there

were benefits in increasing the number of grammatical sentences, and

reducing sentence-construction errors in writing, but fell short of

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concluding that this benefitted overall writing development (Xavier,

C.A, Hong, H.M. & Renandya W., 2020).

However, Jones et al. (2013) as cited by Xavier, Hong, and

Renandya (2020) argue that these studies have largely studied the

teaching of these two areas discretely and have then sought to make

links between these two areas, resulting in the conclusion that

grammar teaching minimally benefits writing development. Myhill et

al. (2012b) as cited by Xavier, Hong, and Renandya (2020) point out

that there is much difficulty with such research as these studies

investigate whether (Xavier, C.A, Hong, H.M. & Renandya W., 2020).

Finally, multiple approaches to grammar teaching and learning

should be implemented in the language classroom. Implicit grammar

teaching might be appropriate for some students; they can find it very

useful and comfortable when the professor uses this methodology. On

the other hand, explicit grammar teaching will be appropriate for

some other students. Some students prefer a communicative

approach to grammar teaching and would rather prefer to learn

grammar through speaking activities. Therefore, a diversity of

approaches to grammar teaching would to a great extent add to th

equality of grammar instruction (Mulalić, A. 2019).

Vocabulary

The ultimate goal of all reading-related instruction in schools is

to help students comprehend text. Among the many factors that

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influence writers’ and readers’ abilities to make meaning from texts is

their knowledge of the words in those texts. Dozens of studies

conducted over the last century have documented a strong

relationship between vocabulary knowledge, writing, and

comprehension, finding, among other things, that the size of a

person’s vocabulary is one of the strongest predictors of his or her

writing skills and reading comprehension (Wright, T. S. & Cervetti, G.

N., 2016).

According to Yovanoff, Duesbery, Alonzo, and Tindal (2005) as

cited by Ashrafzadeh and Nimehchisalem (2015), “vocabulary

knowledge is a significant and constant predictor of overall reading

comprehension irrespective of grade level”. The importance of

vocabulary knowledge has made language teachers consider

vocabulary instruction as a separate subject that usually involves

students in the process of learning definitions of new words and using

them to construct sentences (Ashrafzadeh, A. & Nimehchisalem, V.,

2015).

The study conducted by Durrant (2016), pointed out the use of

the academic vocabulary list of Gardner and Davies (2014) to

university students in improving their writing skills. The study shows

that levels of use of academic vocabulary list items are high, and

increase as students progress through the years of undergraduate and

taught postgraduate study, suggesting that it may be a useful

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resource in developing one’s writing and communication skills

(Durrant, P., 2016).

In their article, Gardner and Davies (2014) present and defend a

new academic word list that they call the Academic Vocabulary List

(AVL) as mentioned in the previous statement. They established the

list using new and sophisticated criteria to ensure greater

representativeness across academic disciplines than the AWL offers.

The AVL is based on a 120-million-word academic sub-corpus from

the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Gardner and

Davies claim that their list more accurately reflects academic word

use today due to the larger, more recent corpus that it pulls from (120

million versus just 3.5 million for the original AWL and its more

narrowly academic focus. Additionally, the words that are identified as

AVL words show greater coverage of academic English texts compared

to the words in the AWL list. More precisely, 14% of the academic

texts in COCA contain AVL words while only 7.2% of the academic

texts contain AWL words in the same corpus. They also assert that

their word list is more “user-friendly” and allows users to view

valuable information on word families and use (e.g., part of speech

category information) that is not currently available with the AWL

(Gardner, D. & Davies, M. 2014).

Another study conducted by Csomay and Prades (2018)

investigated the use of academic vocabulary by non-native English

speaker writers situated in a higher education classroom setting.

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First, they explore relationships between the amount of academic

vocabulary employed and the perceived quality of student writing.

Second, they examine differences in the use of academic words across

assignments, drafts, and levels of instruction. Results showed

significant relationships between academic vocabulary use and essay

scores in some text types, and differences in the way academic

vocabulary is used across text types and levels of instruction,

independent of the drafts. A closer analysis showed that rhetorical

purposes have a strong impact on the amount of academic vocabulary

used. Also, no difference between drafts calls for pedagogical

considerations (Csomay, E. & Prades, A., 2018).

A number of studies looked at vocabulary in student writing

from various perspectives. Cons (2012) as cited by Csomay and Prades

(2018), for example, compared the academic word use of secondary

English learners (ELs) and Re-designated Fluent English Proficient

learners (RFLPs). She looked not only at the raw frequencies of

academic words featured, but also analyzed each word token to

account for possible errors. She discovered that both groups had a

high level of inaccurate use of academic words, which negatively

impacted the overall quality of the text (Csomay, E. & Prades, A.,

2018).

Finally, vocabulary use is just one potential aspect of the quality

of writing and one of the key indicators of academic literacy. The

general assumption is that the higher the instructional level (upper-

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level classes), the more academic words are used as a potential

indicator of proficiency in academic literacy (Gardner, D. & Davies, M.

2014). Moreover, the core academic vocabulary plays a major role in

many gatekeeping tests for higher education and is critical to

successful academic performance and improving students writing and

communication skills (Csomay, E. & Prades, A., 2018).

Enhancement Program for Writing Skills

Language teachers throughout the world are continually looking

for methods of improving their students’ language abilities. Time is

always a key factor in both teacher lesson planning and learner

language acquisition because there never seems to be as much of it as

thought necessary. Students have to deal with the workload and

pressures of being a student, which naturally means learning more

than one subject at a time and preparing for multiple tasks. Adult

learners often have even more life pressures. Considering all of this, it

is necessary for teachers and researchers to look for methods of

enhancing or streamlining the learning process to be more time

effective when teaching language speaking, reading, and writing skills

(Mermelstein, A.D., 2015).

In a study conducted by Huskin (2016), she pointed out that to

correct students' shortcomings in writing proficiency, colleges and

universities have adopted initiatives such as Writing Across The

Curriculum and Writing In The Discipline, demonstrating that

integrating writing strategies results in improved student writing. This

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curricular movement inspired by the premise “writing is thinking,”

suggests that writing activities increase students' learning and

engagement. Institutions dedicate resources for faculty to integrate

writing throughout courses (Huskin, P.R, 2016).

Additionally, colleges and universities have developed quality

enhancement programs addressing student writing needs, requiring

students to complete Writing Intensive courses in their fields of study.

Any course in any discipline can and should support student writing,

even those taught by instructors without preparation to directly teach

writing. In Writing Intensive Courses, students read and write actively

to achieve student learning outcomes. Students often struggle to meet

course demands and achieve a positive outcome. Student writing is

positively correlated with engagement; the more students write, the

more they engage in active and collaborative learning, student-faculty

interaction, enriching experiences, and deeper learning (Huskin, P.R,

2016).

Additionally, an article about collaborative reverse subtitling

written by Talavan, Ibanez, and Barcena (2016) uses collaborative

reverse subtitling as an activity for the promotion of writing skills in

English as a second language. An initial analysis is undertaken of the

pros and cons of the role of translation in second language learning

history and the role of information and communication technology in

this process, with special attention being paid to recent initiatives on

the didactic use of audiovisual translation in the form of subtitling,

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and the evidence of their efficacy obtained so far. Subsequently, a

completed research project is described, which was aimed at

promoting second language learning among distance learning

university students through collaborative reverse subtitling.

Specifically, the project aimed to explore both the potential of a guided

subtitling activity for the development of written production skills and

also the dynamics of undertaking such an activity collaboratively, in

order to gain insights into the social, cognitive, metacognitive, and

transfer mechanisms that can be activated in the collective study

(Talavan, N., Ibanez, A. & Barcena, A., 2016).

In the Philippine setting, the use of a learning management

system as a tool for enhancing students writing skills has a great

impact for the students writing development. One of the popular

learning management systems gaining popularity nowadays in the

field of blended or online learning is the Schoology. The researcher,

who is a strong advocate of pedagogical strategies in the field of

language learning, would like to investigate on the possibility of using

the said Learning Management System (LMS) in the effective delivery

of Business Writing lessons among his students in the university

(Sicat, A., 2015).

In the midst of the positive reviews about Schoology, the

researcher investigated further its effectiveness in enhancing the

proficiency of the college students in Business Writing who are

enrolled in Communication Skills 14-Writing Skills for Specific

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Purposes at Centro Escolar University Makati. Results showed a slight

difference in their mean grades in favor of the control group implying

that the traditional method remains to be more effective in the

teaching of Business Writing. However, when the Pre-test and Post-

tests were administered for both control and experimental groups and

compared their results separately, results yielded a very significant

difference in their mean scores in favor of the experimental group.

This confirms that the proficiency of the subjects in Business Writing

can be further enhanced through the LMS Schoology. Overall, the

findings suggest that teachers should utilize the LMS Schoology only

as a supplement to the traditional method of teaching to enhance the

college student’s proficiency in Business writing (Sicat, A., 2015).

Finally, learning and honing writing skills with the use of some

methods or any enhancement program can have a positive impact on

a student’s individual career advancement. Effective channels of

communication make an organization run smoothly. Professional

quality writing being sent through these channels improves

productivity and the ability of all functional areas to work together,

particularly in an increasingly global workplace where collaboration is

the norm (Hill, B., 2014).

Theoretical Framework

This study is anchored on the theory of Cox, Holden, and

Pickket (1997), who found out that the writing workshop approaches

enhanced at-risk students’ attitudes toward writing. Writing

 27

workshops is a natural learning approach. Students choose their own

writing topics and genres and most of the class time is devoted to

writing. Ten minutes or less a day is devoted to minilessons of brief

instruction in writing strategies. While writing workshops can be an

effective method for improving students’ attitudes toward writing.

Graham and Harris (1997) added that children who experience

difficulty in writing are unlikely to need to discover what they need to

know just through frequent writing and reading.

Moreover, a possible reason for students’ low writing skills could

be that many students have little opportunity to write (Anson and

Beach, 1995).

In addition, a possible solution for improving the writing skills

of students, especially at-risk students is by implementing writing

across the curriculum program. The central philosophy of this study

which was developed by British educators in the 1970s is that all

teachers in all discipline should include writing as part of their course

content in order to improve subject area learnings and writing skills.

Conceptual Framework

Presented in Figure 1 is the conceptual framework of the study.

The independent variable of this study is written communication skills

with the following indicators: Spelling, which refers to the process or

activity of writing or naming the letters of a word, Sentence

Construction, which is the way a sentence is arranged, grammatically,

 28

Grammar, refers to the structure of the language or of languages in

general, and Vocabulary, which refers to the words used or familiar

words within a person’s language.

While the dependent variable is the Basis for Enhancement

Program of the University of Mindanao Tagum College.

Figure 1. The Conceptual Framework of the study

Written Communication Skills

Basis for
- Spelling
Enhancement
- Sentence Construction
Program
- Grammar- Vocabular

Significance of the study

This study will help to contribute to the benefit of students

considering that verbal communication skills and its basis for the

selection scheme of AB students’ competencies would play an

important role in the following entities.

 29

Student. The greater demand for graduates with English

background and greater opportunities to work effectively.

School. The School will be highly recommended derive from the

results of this study would train the students better. Administrators

shall be much more improve their curriculum towards performance in

verbal communication skills and the basis for the selection scheme of

AB students.

Future Researchers. The study will help them to find answers

to critical areas in the educational process results that many

researchers would not focus to explore and uncover this problem.

Definition of terms

For a better understanding of this research, the following

definitions are herein given.

Writing is a method of representing language in visual or tactile

form. Writing systems use sets of symbols to represent the sounds of

speech, and may also have symbols for such things as punctuation

and numerals.

Spelling is the learner’s ability to write a word correctly.

Writing accurate spelling adds to the quality of overall writing texts.

The study of learners’ spelling errors provides an opportunity to

understand and facilitate the learners’ spelling difficulties (Al-zuoud &

Kabilan, 2013). Cook asserts that "unlike native speakers, students

may not know the actual system of English, and will appear to use the
 30

wrong letter". Writing well is really a big challenge for both native and

non-native students.

A sentence define as “a sentence is a set or group of words

which makes complete sense”. It can also be defined as a sentence a

group of words that includes a subject and a predicate and expresses

a complete thought (Wren & Martin 1999).

 31

Chapter 2

METHOD

This chapter presents the research design, research locale,

population and sample, research instrument, data collection, and

statistical tools.

Research Design

This study utilized a quantitative non-experimental research

design utilizing a correlational technique. Quantitative research

methods focus on measurements that are objective, with statistical

analysis or numerical data collecting. Data are gathered through

different methods such as polls and questionnaires (Creswell, 2009).

This survey deals with quantitative data about the said

phenomenon. The quantitative aspect is an appropriate schedule for

gathering the data designed for the target respondents to answer the

questions. The process of gathering the data is based on the use of a

questionnaire. The focus of the investigation is to determine the level

of written communication skills and its basis for the enhancement

program of AB students at the University of Mindanao Tagum College

in Tagum City, Davao del Norte.

Research Locale
 32

The findings of this study are specific to the context of the AB

students of University of Mindanao Tagum College At Arellano Street,

Tagum City, Davao del Norte. The possibility for the general

applicability of the findings will be limited by the scope and the

sample.
 33

University of
Mindanao
Tagum College
 34

Population and Sample

In this study the proposal number of respondents will be 50

students of AB English students at the University of Mindanao Tagum

College in Tagum City, Davao del Norte. Shown in Tabe 1 are

respondents of the study who were college AB students.

Distribution of Respondents

Name of Respondent Number of Respondents

Tagum City

AB English Students in University of Mindanao

Tagum College

First Year Students

Second Year Students

Third Year Students

Fourth Year Students

Total

Research Instrument

The questionnaire used in this study was formulated carefully

by the researchers to have a thorough and convenient in collecting

information. It will be directed to confirm the level of written

 35

communication skills and basis for enhancement program of AB

English Students in UM Tagum College.

The effective of questionnaire for data collection depended on

the mode of formulation and administration of the questions, the

medium of delivering the questionnaire and the method of contacting

respondents for retrieval of the questionnaire. These Mode affect the

credibility and quality of data obtained (Gay, 1992).

Furthermore, a descriptive research involves collecting data in

order to test or answer the hypothesis through a questionnaire,

survey, interview, or observations.

The questionnaires were distributed to the respective

respondents to achieve responses.

For the level of the written communication skills based on the

following parameters employed.

Range of Means Interpretation Description

4.3 – 5.0 Very High This signifies that the

written communication
is very much by manifest
by the students.

3.5 – 2.8 High This signifies that the

written communication
skill is much manifested
by the students.

2.7 – 3.4 Moderate This signifies that the

written communication
skill is moderately

manifested by the
 36

students.

1.9 – 2.6 Low This signifies that the

written communication

is fairly manifested by

the students.

1 – 1.8 Very low This signifies that the

written communication

skill is not manifested

by the students.

In order to determine the level of linguistic competence of the AB students for

group data the following parameters, we’re being used.

Range of means Interpretation Description

50.5 – 63 Very high It means that the basis

For

enhancement program

of the student is

outstanding.

37.9 – 50.4 High It means that the basis

for enhancement program

of the student is

satisfactory.
 37

25.3 – 37.8 Average It means that the basis

for

enhancement program

of the student is

satisfactory

12.7 -25.2 Low It means that the basis

for

enhancement program of

the student is fair.

0 – 12.6 Very Low It means that the basis

for

enhancement program of

the Student is need

improvement.

Data Gathering Procedures

The following steps and procedures should be followed in

gathering the data needed in this study.

Statistical Treatment

The following statistical tools were used in the analysis and

interpretation of the results.

 38

Mean. This is use to determine the level of written

communication skills and basis for enhancement program of AB

English students,

Pearson-r. This is used to determine the significant relationship

between the level of written communication skills and the basis for the

enhancement program of AB English students.

Multiple Regression Analysis. This statistical is used to

determine the influence of written communication skills and the basis

for the enhancement program in UM Tagum.

 39

Chapter 3

RESULT

Presented in this chapter are the data and results of the study.

Tables are arranged in the subheadings: Level of Written

Communication Skills of AB-English students in University of

Mindanao Tagum College and Basis for Enhancement Program with

their corresponding indicators.

Level of Written Communication Skills of AB-ENGLISH students

Shown in Table 1 are the mean scores for the indicators of

Written Communication Skills of the Student with an overall mean of

24.08 describe as a Low with a standard deviation of 7.24. The low

level could be attributed to the low grades result given by the

respondents in all indicators. This means that the written

communication of the student is low. Literacy students are Low of the

cases in terms of Spelling, Grammar, Vocabulary and Sentence

Construction.

The cited overall mean score was the result gathered from

the following computed mean scores from highest to lowest: 7.00 or

high for Vocabulary with a standard deviation of 2.29; 6.42 for

Spelling with a standard deviation of 2.08; 2.64 or Sentence

Construction with a standard deviation of 4.46; and lastly, 1.72 or

Grammar with a standard deviation of 2.19.

 40

Table 1. Level of written communication skills of AB-English students in

UMTC

Indicator Mean SD DescriptiveLevel

Spelling 6.42 2.08 Low

Grammar 6.19 1.72 Very low

Vocabulary 7.00 2.29 Low

Sentence Construction 4.46 2.64 Low

TOTAL 24.08 7.24 Low

Among all the indicators, Grammar got a very low result. This signifies

that the written communication skill is not manifested by the

students. This determines that the students have a problem in their

grammar written communication.

On the other hand, Spelling got the second low result; this

signifies that the written communication is fairly manifested by the

students. Furthermore, the said students can

The indicator that got a third Low result is Vocabulary which is

Low. This signifies that the written communication is fairly manifested

by the students. In addition, this result recognized that some students

can construct a sentence well.

 41

The lastly, Sentence Construction also got a low mean result;

this signifies that the written communication of the students is still

fairly manifested.
 42

Chapter 4

DISCUSSION

The data of AB English students in University of Mindanao

Tagum College are presented in this chapter and said discussions are

based on the findings appeared in the previous section.

Level of Written Communication Skills of AB-English Students in

UMTC

The respondent's level of Written Communication Skills of Ab-

English Students at the University of Mindanao Tagum College is Low.

This means that the written communication is need to be develop and

enhance in the students. This indicates that the following indicators

provides the idea of implementing a Written Communication

Enhancement Program for an Ab-English students .

Furthermore, when we arranged from very low to highest,

Grammar got a very low result that makes the student reveal that

they are unable to construct a clear sentence structure that can affect

their written communication skills.

Spelling is at the second level. It has also a low mean which

says that the written communication skills of the student is low in

terms of spelling proficiency. It means that they have difficulties in

spelling. Spelling difficulties can be enduring in individuals with

 43

reading disabilities. Lack of exposure to printed words may adversely

influence their spelling.

Third indicator got also a Low mean which is Vocabulary, there

were some factors that caused students' difficulties in learning

vocabulary the written form is different from the spoken form in

English, the number of words that students need to learn is

exceedingly large, the limitations of sources of information about

words, the complexity of word knowledge which affects the written

communication skills of the students.

And finally, but not least, Sentence Construction got the last low

mean. This means that the said students are lack of emphasized

collaboration. Their response has serious and frequent errors in

sentence construction or usage, the text shows a lack of control of

vocabulary and or grammar.

 44

CONCLUSION

Conclusion

After the interpretation of data, the gathered details turned into

figures have come up with a conclusion. The level of written

communication skills in AB-English students in UMTC in terms of

Grammar in very low result, also in Spelling got a low result, and in

Vocabulary got a low result, lastly Sentence Construction. In line with

that result, the AB- English students had difficulties in grammar

knowing that most of them got wrong choices/answers during the test

questionnaire given by us as a researcher. The result shows that

most of the students somehow chose to use their vacant hours in

working rather than studying their lessons for the upcoming exam

and it was shown in the result given which is grammar (1.72) got a

very low result. Moreover, the level of assessing the academic

performance of the working students in UMTC in terms of grammar

(1.72) determines that the working students less studying their

grammar which will affect their written communication skills of ab

English students.

Overall, the level of written communication skills of AB-English

students of UMTC is very low. This means that the written

communication skills of AB-English students of UMTC are very low

affected in terms of spelling, vocabulary, and sentence construction.

 45

Recommendation

After a thorough review of the aforementioned findings and

conclusions of the study, the following recommendations were offered:

having the pre-test to the post-test after the application of cooperative

learning in the class of the written communication skills of AB-

English students of UMTC may be raised from low to a very high

result if there is a way of using cooperative learning methods in

helping students improve their writing skills. Furthermore, the

importance and impact of student learning methods really help focus

on the learning progress and outcome of each student. The action

plan that needs to solve this problem is to have a pretest and post-test

which is essential for the positive effects of cooperative learning in

improving the writing skill of students at the school at the level of

spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and sentence construction. The action

plan should be applied Monday to Friday to make sure that the

assessment will become more effective and create a chance of having a

better output among the students

Identified Action to be taken Involve Time/Frame

Problem Person Duration

 Create rhymes and Monday

Spelling raps using spelling. Wednesday
 Create a spelling friday (MWF)
wall in the classroom.
 46

 Make a fun
crossword. Students
 Jumble word.
 Use arts and crafts
to encourage spelling.
 Create a game of
word bingo.
Grammar Grammar rules should Monday to
be the emphasis of Friday(M-F)
learners. Students
 Board work
presentations. For a
quick and easy
presentation of a new
language, the board is
the obvious resource to
exploit.
 Using the students
and you, the teacher
 Dialogue building
 Dictation
 Dictogloss
 Drilling
 Songs

Every third week

Vocabulary o Obtain of the
additional new month(MWF)
terms to use in
future projects. Students
o -Develop a habit
of reading since
learning words in
context is the
most effective
way to expand
vocabulary.

o Make a word map.

o Use the Frayer
Model.
o Draw vocabulary
sketch notes.
o Match words to
describe a character.
o Fill in words from A
to Z.
 47

o Try Flipgrid for

vocabulary
activities.

Sentense o Practice using Every fourth

Construction relative clauses. week of the
o Practice using Students month (MWF)
compound
sentences.
o Practice using
complex
sentences.
o Practice using
the active and
passive voice.

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