The students have to take an assessment for writing prompts in order to determine their level in their writing skills. Particularly in linguistic abilities, their communicative competence in four areas should be measured. These include speaking, reading, writing and listening. In this case, the writing communicative aspect was assessed.
Using the intermediate level as the participants and using the graded and appropriate rubrics, I came to encounter some of their writing strengths and weaknesses. I have to discuss first on their strengths. Most of them have grammatical flaws most especially on the subject and verb agreement. They find it confusing on how the number of subject agrees with the verb. Going back, there are several rules concerning subject and verb agreement; however, they have difficulty in absorbing all of these mainly because of confusion. Second is the syntax. Apart from the grammar, the structure of their sentences is improperly constructed. There were some dangling and misplaced modifiers in their sentences.
Aside from grammar and syntax, there are also those who committed errors in the proper use of words. In morphology, words are formed by how they are used in a sentence. However, in their case, they sometimes resort to using the wrong words, causing mixed-up thoughts and ideas in their sentences. The use of words is also dependent on the context and pragmatics of the sentence. Pragmatics explains that words have the tendency to have ambiguous meanings. One then has to be certain and cautious in picking the right word for his or her utterance.
Going to their strengths, they have good themes. Their themes are generated from various factors such as their personal experiences and social issues, most especially those that concern the youth. This is a good test of their critical thinking skills.
Writing Assessment Chart
Writing Assessment Chart
