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Difficulties in Writing an essay of Grade 11 HUMSS

A Research Paper

Submitted to the Senior High School Department

Puerto Galera National High School

Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro

In Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Subject

Practical Research 1

By

Adriano, Alexandro

Gamor, Abdul Jhalal

Daniel, Han-Z

Sevilla, Juliesa

June 2023
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CHAPTER 1

THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING

INTRODUCTION

Creating writing is one of the major subject in HUMSS strand specifically in 11th Grade,

thus in order to succeed academically, we must be creative in a variety of ways. However, each

topic has a unique issue. Writing an essay in Creative Writing have shown multiple difficulties due

to lack of knowledge on how to perform it and some have difficulties in English comprehension.

We can’t deny the fact that essay-writing is so much struggling for students like us. Therefore,

writing in English become significant for the academic development of the students but many of

these learners may be non-native speakers of English, you don’t have to be fluent in English

language to make a better essay instead you should be confident on what you are doing. Some of

the students come from educational contexts that do not emphasize academic writing skills. As a

result, they may struggle with structuring their ideas coherently, using appropriate citations,

references, and adopting a formal voice.

Teachers also struggles for teaching on how they can help students to improve students’

essay-writing. The fact that it’s not easy to learn immediately, we really should have at least skills

on this.

One of the key difficulties faced by Grade 11- HUMSS students is a lack of familiarity with

academic conventions and language. When we talk about English language, some students

ignore it, some reasons are “it’s hard to learn English” or “we’re in the Philippines we should focus

more on out native language which is Filipino.” Most especially when they are from schools that

doesn’t focus on learning English that makes them difficult to write, read and understand English
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words. This may be one of the reasons of lack of confidence.

The researchers have observed that some Humanities and Social Sciences

(HUMSS) students struggles in writing an essay. In this study, the researchers aim to

determine how this difficulties affects the students grades. In addition to this, this

investigation also aims to determine the solution that will help them to conquer those

difficulties.

This study aims to conduct a research that focuses on the community of a lived

experience within a particular group. Additionally, the difficulties of writing essays to

understand the additional needs of this study This approach needed to be studied because

the main students wanted to know their issue. Furthermore, our topic was making the

students acknowledge how writing essays is very important. And in this study, the

participants were only students in the main that needed to be smarter about writing essays.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

This study aims to investigate and to determine the difficulties encountered by Grade

11-HUMSS students in writing essays.

Specifically, it seeks to answer the following questions:

1. What are the hindrances and possible reasons why most of the students struggle in

essay writing?

2. What are the experiences of Grade 11- HUMSS students in making an essay?

3. How these difficulties affect their grades and how they can improve their writing skills?
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4. What practical program can be implemented to assist the said students regarding the

PUERTO
difficulties GALERA NATIONAL
they encountered HIGH SCHOOL
in essay writing? MERGEFO

SCOPE AND DELIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

This study will focus on the experiences of 13 selected Grade 11- HUMSS students

that comes from three (3) sections of the said strand. This investigation will include the

difficulties that encountered by them in Creative Writing. The students will consider the ways

to learn on how to maintain their use of grammar, spelling, and punctuations in writing a good

essay. This study will also examine the possible effects of these experiences and the

improvements on their performance.

The researcher will gather information about the difficulties they encounter in writing an

essay in terms of introduction, body, and conclusion. The grades of the students in creative writing

will be examined to know if the difficulties encountered affect their grades. It focused on

determining the causes of difficulties such as Lack of confidence, Insufficient knowledge, Lack of

writing skills, Plagiarism, Getting stuck, Awkward structure, Time management, Lack of time, Lack

of inspiration, Unclear analysis, Poor editing and Proofreading skills and many more. The findings

of the study can provide insights and recommendations to improve their writing skills.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This study provides a deeper understanding of how students can improve their essay

writing skills in creative writing. The results will be beneficial to the following people:

To the teachers, the results can serve as the awareness of discussing on how to make an
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essay the way that the students can easily understand.

To the students, the results can serve as inspiration for them to continue to improve their

essay-writing skills in creative writing.

To future researchers, the result for this study can be useful to them and serve as guide

so that they will already know what are the difficulties and solutions in the study of this research.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

The following terms used in this study are defined operationally:

Creative Writing - this is one o the major subject in HUMSS, second semester.

Essay - these are the context which contains Introduction, Body, and Conclusion.

Skills - the knowledge you own that you can use in writing an essay.

HUMSS - 1 out of 5 strands available in PGNHS main campus.

Difficulties - the challenges they may encounter that can hinder them to create a good

essay.
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CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents the related literature and studies that are carefully chosen by the

researchers from the available resources. It provides a basis or frame of reference for the

conduct of the investigation.

According to Allison (2017), lack of confidence is one of problems students deal with in

writing their essay. Students who believe they are not good writers will struggle to begin with their

papers. They are skeptical about their capacity to execute it. And because of this self-doubt,

students may never even attempt to begin working on their paper.

The study talks about that lack of confidence is really one of the students’ problem in essay-

writing. Students who have lack of confidence doesn’t explain their opinions that’s why they ended

up being shy in their works.

Abbas (2017) stated that, learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesia,

particularly those in the English Education Department, are heavily encouraged to have good

writing skills. This is so that the writing accomplishments of the students may be useful and to

have a good contribution to the advancement of English Language training (ELT) in Indonesia,

most especially n the training of writing talent. To enhance the learners' writing ability, a writing

assessment and evaluation are required. This study seeks to measure the EFL learners in writing

academically and scientific essays. According to the writing exam results, the learners' average

score was 68.8, which was considered to be a fair level. Based on the discussion with the

students,
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they felt it was challenging to generate and organize ideas in a composition with appropriate

language and diction. Basic writing techniques and learning resources were the main influences.

To assist and enhance the learners' writing skill, proper learning materials backed by writing

strategies are required.

This study shows the percentage of EFL learners and the result of evaluation it says that it

was challenging when it comes to writing an essay, students should really have the writing ability

to accomplished and make it good enough.

According to Rahmat et al., (2017), both a social and cognitive activity, writing can be

categorized in several ways. Though many ESL students dislike writing the least out of the four

language skills, it is nonetheless one of them. Writing might be difficult for students. It is

challenging for teachers to teach writing. It is difficult to teach or develop writing abilities since they

include planning, writing, editing, and possibly rewriting. Expectations are thought to be a major

factor in students' success in their academic endeavors by psychologists. Writing instructors

concur that one of the reasons students struggle to write successfully is that they find academic

ESL writing challenging.

This study investigates how challenging for the students when it comes to academic writing.

This study also tackles that academic writing essay is challenging for teachers too. There are

writing abilities that need to developed.

According to Belkhir and Benyelles (2017), it is well recognized that in order to have a strong

command of the target language, EFL learners must be proficient in all four language skills:

speaking, reading, and writing. For EFL teachers and students alike, teaching or learning how to

write in a foreign language is not often an easy task. The statistics obtained show that because of
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a lack of reading, a transfer from their native tongue, and little writing practice, the pupils struggle

with coherence and continuity. Paying close attention to these sources is necessary in the effort to

reduce pupils' essay writing challenges.

In terms of English language, students should be good in those, English speaking or in

English language, this will help the stuents to conquer their shyness and have confidence.

Pablo and Lasaten (2018) stated that, he academic writings of 227 Grade 11 Senior High

School students in the Laoag City School Division were chosen and assessed for the study's

objectives using the random sample technique. Findings indicate that students struggle to write

academic essays due to a lack of variety in their ideas, a lack of connectives in their organization,

the incorrect use of idioms and words, poor sentence structure in their language use, the use of

the first person pronoun in their lack of formality and objectivity, and a lack of citations in their

referencing. The overall caliber of the pupils' academic essays, it should be noted, ranges from

low to fair. Additionally, academic essays written by students who attend private schools are of

higher quality than those written by children who attend public schools.

Students struggles in essay-writing due to many reasons and this study also talks about it.

Overall, this study gives us hints about the struggles of students on this so that we may improve it

to be better next time. In addition to this, study also talks about the difference of learning in private

school and public school, but whether we study in public or private school we should really focus

on our studies most specially in academic writing.

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CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter includes the design section of the study, the locale, the sample and sampling

technique, research instrument, data gathering procedure, and data analysis plan.

RESEARCH DESIGN

This study will use both quantitative and qualitative research design or mixed method

with an phenomenological approach.

“Phenomenology is a philosophy of experience. For phenomenology the ultimate

source of all meaning and value is the lived experience of human beings. All philosophical

systems, scientifil theories, or aesthetic judgements have the status of abstraction from the

ebb and flow of the lived world” (Armstrong, 2005).

This research uses phenomenology since it focuses on the experience in essay writing

and aims to understand the difficulties of HUMSS strand students from Puerto Galera National

High School.

RESEARCH LOCALE

This study was conducted in Puerto Galera National High School - Main campus,

where 13 students of 3 sections in Grade 11 - HUMSS are the respondents of this research.

SAMPLE AND SAMPLING TECHNIQUE

The researcher intends to examine the difficulties experienced by HUMSS students in

essay-writing. The study's participants were selected through purposive sampling. Purposive
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sampling is a non-probability method for obtaining a sample where researchers use their

expertise to choose specific participants that will help the study meet its goals. These

subjects have particular characteristics that the researchers need to evaluate their research

question. In other words, the researchers pick the participants on purpose. The samples of

this study will be gathered from the HUMSS strand of PGNHS Main Campus in Puerto

Galera. The researchers will select respondents based on the criteria needed in data

gathering. Specifically, HUMSS students will be selected since they are undergoing Creative

Writing. In the conduct of this study we will explore the difficulties encountered by the HUMSS

student in writing and essay and make a solution to aid them.

RESEARCH INSTRUMENT

The researchers will use interview and surveys to gathered data information. Interview is

under qualitative research method that relies on asking questions in order to collect data while

survey is under quantitative research method that is used for collecting data from a set of

respondents. The researchers will make a questionnaire that contains questions regarding the

difficulties in writing an essay at Puerto Galera National High School.

DATA GATHERING PROCEDURE

In order for the researchers to collect the data, they will conduct a face to face interview

with their participant of choice and survey questionnaires. The only people that took part in this

research were the 13 students from 3 section of HUMSS strand at Puerto Galera National High

School.

The researchers expecting the full participation of the respondents in the given survey

questionnaires. The participants are also required to answer all of the researchers' questions in
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a completely and truthful manner. The interviewees' responses will remain confidential. The

researchers questions are only focused on the difficulties they encounter in writing an essay.

In the interview, the participants are required to answer all of the researchers' questions in

a completely and truthful manner. The researchers will record notes during the interview and

highlight significant responses on an interview protocol sheet.

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REFERENCES

Nova A. (November 11, 2017) 7 essay writing problems that students often deal

with. https://myperfectswords.com/blog/essay-writing-guide/essay-writing-problems.

Abbas, M.F.F. (2017) Assessing and evaluating EFL learners ability in writing

academic essay. Vol. 5.

http://ejournal.unp.ac.id/index.php/selt/article/view/8013.

Rahmat, N., Arepin M., Rohayu D., Yuno M., Syed, S.A., & Rahman, A. (2017)

Analyzing perceived writing difficulties through the social cognitive theory.

Volume 3 Issue 2, pp. 1487-1499.

https://dx.doi.org/10.20319/pijs.2017.32.14871499.

Belkhir, A., & Benyelles, R., (June 2017). Identifying EFL learners essay writing

difficulties and sources: a move towards solution the case of second year EFL

learners at Tlemcen University. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and

Educational Research. Vol. 16, No. 6, pp. 80-88.

http://ijlter.net/index.php/ijlter/article/download/811/816.

Pablo, J.C.I., & Lasaten, R.C.S. (Ph.D), ( August 17, 2018). Writing Difficulties

and Quality of Academic Essays of Senior High School Students. Asia Pacific

Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, Vol. 6 No.4, 46-57.

https://www.academia.edu/download/62386599/APJMR-2018-6.4.0620200316-59462-

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