The Writing Competence of Senior High School Students in the Public Schools in Alamada, Cotabato

The purpose of this study was to determine the writing competence of the students in Alamada, Cotabato. Specifically, it determined the students’ writing proficiency; distinguished the level of writing proficiency in the different constructs such as content, structure, lexico-grammatical ability and mechanics; identified the students’ level of writing competence; and developed an action plan pertaining to the writing competence of the students. The study was conducted in Senior High Schools in the public schools in Alamada. The respondents were the 248 Grade 11 students enrolled in the second semester and were identified through a stratified random sampling method. This study was descriptive. The students were asked to write an essay and was evaluated by three inter-raters. An adopted analytic rubric was used in checking students’ essays. Frequency count, percentage and mean were used to determine the competence of the students. The study revealed that student’s level of writing proficiency was Developing. Their level of writing proficiency in the areas of Content and Structure was Approaching Proficiency while in Lexico-grammatical Ability and Mechanics were Developing. Moreover, it was found that among them, 1% were Novice, 28% were Intermediate, 48% were Refined, 19% were Superior and 4% were Distinguished writers. Finally, an action plan pertaining to the writing competence of the students was developed to address the needs of the students. Hence, it can be concluded that students need enrichment of vocabulary, mastery in grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, and most importantly, skills in writing.