Abstract
The COVID-19 epidemic has fundamentally changed conventional teaching methods by pushing much of the instruction online. This change has highlighted written examinations for language courses, which begs questions about students' writing skills particularly in terms of structure of ideas. The effect of outlining as a prewriting strategy on senior high school students' organizing writing abilities is examined in this paper. Inspired by Flower and Hayes' (1981) Cognitive Process Theory of Writing, this quasi-experimental research had two groups: an experimental group using outlines prior to writing and a control group employing free writing. Five writing sessions included a sample of twenty Grade 11 University of Saint Louis Tuguegarao students. Descriptive statistics and a paired samples t-test were part of data analysis to ascertain if outlining helped to improve organizational abilities. Results imply that outlining greatly improves students's capacity for organization and structure of their writing, therefore supporting its possible use as a teaching tool in language education. This study offers information for teachers trying to enhance their writing teaching and implies directions for further studies on prewriting techniques.
