Effectiveness of Writing Strategies in Teaching English for Grade 11 Students

Abstract

The study aimed to determine the effectiveness of writing strategies in teaching English to Grade 11 students at Philsin College Rizal Inc. during the School Year 2024–2025. The respondents of the study were 38 Grade 11 students—comprising 19 students from the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) track and 19 students from the HAT (Humanities and Social Sciences, Accountancy and Business Management, Technical-Vocational-Livelihood) track—who participated as a single group. They were described in terms of age, sex, sibling position, number of children in the family, parent’s educational attainment, parent’s occupation, and monthly family income. The students first took a pretest to assess their baseline writing skills in four areas: descriptive, narrative, persuasive, and expository writing styles. Following the pretest, the students were exposed to various writing strategies designed to improve their writing skills. After the intervention, the same group took a posttest to evaluate any changes in their writing abilities. The pretest and posttest scores were compared to measure the effectiveness of the writing strategies. The experimental design was utilized for this study because it allows for a clear evaluation of the causal impact of the writing strategies on students' writing skills within a single group. Although there is no control group, the use of pretest and posttest measures enables the researcher to track changes in writing performance before and after the intervention. This design ensures that the findings provide valuable insights into how the writing strategies influence students' abilities while controlling for any external factors during the study period. The study revealed that most students are 16 years old, with an equal gender distribution. They are primarily firstborns, from small families, and come from low- to middle-income households. Most of their parents are college graduates, with fathers typically working in the private sector and mothers primarily being homemakers. On the other hand, the study showed significant improvements in descriptive, narrative, and persuasive writing skills, proving the effectiveness of the writing strategies. While pretest results indicated many students at the failing level, posttest results revealed increased proficiency, with more achieving satisfactory to outstanding scores. Persuasive writing showed the most progress, while expository writing improved the least. Overall, the intervention successfully reduced failing scores and enhanced writing performance. Statistical analysis revealed a significant improvement in descriptive, narrative, and persuasive writing styles, rejecting the null hypothesis for these categories. However, for expository writing style, the null hypothesis was accepted, indicating that the writing strategies applied did not significantly impact performance in this area. No significant difference in writing performance was found when students were grouped by age, number of children in the family, monthly family income, mother’s educational attainment, and father’s occupation. A significant difference was observed when grouped by sex, where male students outperformed females. Narrative writing style performance varied significantly based on sibling position and father’s educational attainment. Expository writing style performance showed significant variation based on the mother’s occupation. The study concluded that the writing strategies resulted in a significant improvement in the pretest and posttest scores of Grades 11 students, particularly in descriptive, narrative, and persuasive writing. The greatest improvement was in persuasive writing.