Keith Daniel Z.
Edquila
11-Bernoulli
EAPP Essay
Questions:
- What are the certain skills that senior high school students lack in academic writing?
- What are the necessary steps to be done for senior high school students to excel in academic writing?
The Current State of the Senior High School Students' academic writing skills
Academic writing is a way of writing students need to master in order to excel in the world of academia.
They need to acquire some certain skills in writing to enhance their language competence, critical
analysis, and conceptualization. In the Philippines, English is taught in every school from elementary to
senior high school. With many years of studying English, do the Filipino senior high school students
already possess the certain skills in academic writing? Even though English is regarded as the Philippine’s
second language, vast amount of students still lack efficiency and still have a lot to improve in academic
writing.
A study by Pablo and Lasaten (2018) found that senior high school students have difficulties in writing
academic essays such as lack of variety of ideas in terms of content and ideas, lack of connectives in
terms organization, incorrect word or idiom and word usage in terms vocabulary and word choice, poor
sentence structures in terms of language use, use of first person pronoun in terms of formality and
objectivity, and lack of citations in terms of referencing. The study also found out that the general
quality of student’s academic essay ranges from poor to fair. These results suggests that Filipino
students are still struggling, and a lot of efforts must be done. Teachers also plays a vital role in the
development of the students’ writing skills. The study suggests that more exposure to academic writing
activities such as giving them more writing activities to diminish their struggles. Students should be
encouraged to read more academic essays which they can use as a guide in writing essays or journal of
their own.
In conclusion, Filipino senior high school students in general still have low, underdeveloped skills in
academic writing. In spite of these negative results, there is a possibility that the students will attain
excellence in writing. Countless efforts are yet to be fulfilled for Filipino students, particularly senior high
school students, achieve quality academic writing. A quality education should be provided to students.
Students should be inspired and motivated to develop their skills, for there is a clear and successful
future that awaits them.