THE SCHOOL PAPER WRITERS OF PHILIPPINE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS IN JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA AND THEIR LEVEL OF WRITING COMPETENCE: A CORRELATION

This descriptive-correlational study examines the status and the level of writing competence of student-writers from the five Philippine International Schools in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Participants include the 100 student-writers and twelve school paper advisers. The research which used questionnaires and interviews had revealed the following: that female writers outnumbered the male counterparts; most of the writers had high performance in English; most respondents were able to attend seminars and conferences which helped improve their writing competence; highly qualified female teacher-advisers dominated the advising population and were more knowledgeable in scholastic journalism; student-respondents performed “good” in all writing category while the teacher-advisers of school publication had “very good” writing competency in writing. Drawn from the results, the profile of student-writers is certainly significant factors to make them competent in writing editorials, features, sports, copyreading and photojournalism. This is attributed to students’ elite performance in English and rich experiences in campus writing; a significant relationship was evident between the profile of teacher-advisers and their level of writing competence in photojournalism; anda very significant relationship between the profile of the advisers and the school writers’ writing competence was clearly manifested in this research.