Writing Skills Development Of The Freshmen Engineering Students In Batangas State University

This study focused on the evaluation of the writing skills of the first year engineering students in Batangas State University in terms of grammatical stylistic mechanical and judgment skills. The respondents took up an English grammar subject during the first semester of the school year 2014-2015. Specifically it determined the diagnostic test results on writing skills in terms of grammatical stylistic mechanical and judgement skills. Likewise it identified the writing skills of the respondents that are adequately developed or undeveloped. This study utilized the descriptive method of research using the cross sectional-design. The researcher employed four hundred eighty-three 483 out of the total of one thousand five hundred seventy-four 1574 first year engineering students. These students were given the diagnostic tests designed to elicit information on their writing skills. Pre-validated diagnostic test was the main tool used in the study. Statistical tools used were frequency count percentage technique arithmetic mean and Pearson Product-Moment Coefficient of Correlation. Findings of the study revealed that among the four writing skills the students have adequately developed their grammatical and stylistic skills like the use of the third principal part of the verb and modifier in the case of grammatical skills the use of prepositional phrase antecedent and verb in the case of stylistic skills. The undeveloped skills of the students are due to their inability to spot errors on the use of unnecessary adverb and article subject-verb agreement in the case of grammatical skills the use of inverted sentence in the case of stylistic skills the use of colon apostrophe and exclamation point in the case of mechanical skills use of contrasting ideas in the case of judgment skills.