Writing Skills of Freshman Students of the College of Education

Writing is one of the central pillars of language learning and should be major interest and concern to teachers and students. This study used the descriptive-comparative survey method. It determined the writing skills level of the freshman education students at Mindanao State University- Maguindanao in mechanics in terms of grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure and in rhetoric in terms of strategy, organization and style.  Furthermore, the researcher utilized a researcher’s-made communicative writing tests as research instrument of the study. The respondents of the study were the fifty six (56) BSEd freshman education. Based on the data gathered, the following summary of findings were presented: The writing skill level of the freshman college of education students in mechanics in terms of grammar was “satisfactory” with the mean of 4.09, punctuation was “satisfactory” with  the mean of 4.06,  sentence structure was “satisfactory” with the  mean of 4.20,  mechanics  as a whole is “satisfactory” as indicated by the overall mean of 4.12; the writing skill obtained a Friedman X²r statistics of 2.153 and a p-value of 0.341 described as not significant; the writing skill level of the freshman college of education students in rhetoric in terms of strategy was “poor” with the mean of 3.71, organization was “satisfactory” with the  mean of 4.44, style was “poor” with  the mean of 3.72, and  rhetoric as a whole  was “satisfactory” as indicated by the overall mean of 3.96; the writing skill obtained a Friedman X²r statistics of 27.96 and a p-value of 0.001 described as significant; there was no significant difference between writing skills level in mechanics and rhetoric. Based on the findings of the study, it is concluded that the freshman Education Students’ writing skills in mechanic and rhetoric need further enhancement.