Writing Difficulties in the Academic Essays of Grade 12 Students in English for Academic and Professional Purposes (EAPP): Basis for Designing a Remedial Writeshop

Abstract

This descriptive study examined writing difficulties in the Grade 12 students’ academic essays in English for Academic and Professional Purposes for the school year 2023-2024. Similarly, this study designed a remedial writeshop to address the issues found and strengthen the quality of the respondents’ academic essays. Total of 136 students from the Don Juan Flores Avalon National High School’s four strands were selected using random sampling and made up the study’s samples. The researcher used two written exercises, the first of which contained a predetermined thesis and the second of which had none. Frequency counts, percentages, and rank distributions were used to assess the inventory of the writing difficulties. Findings showed that the most frequent writing difficulty in terms of organization was the incorrect use and absence of connectives. For language use, the most frequent writing difficulty was the incorrect use of grammar and poor sentence structure, while the most frequent writing difficulty along content and ideas was the lack of variety of ideas and arguments. In terms of vocabulary and word choice, the most frequent writing difficulty was the incorrect word choices, while in mechanics was the evident use of misspelled words, incorrect capitalization and punctuations. Thus, a remedial writeshop was designed to enhance the instruction and the performance of the students that would address the five most frequent difficulties in writing academic essays.