Writing Difficulties Encountered by Humanities and Social Sciences Students in Philippine Politics and Governance

Abstract

Writing is a very intricate skill to acquire among the four language skills. This qualitative study was conducted to determine the writing difficulties committed by Humanities and Social Sciences (HumSS) students and analyze how they develop a topic in Philippine Politics and Governance (PPG). Participants of the study were the Grade 11 students of Morong National High School, Morong, Rizal, who took up the said subject for S.Y. 2019-2020 in its First Semester. Twelve (12) students from the six (6) HumSS classes were selected using the Systematic Sampling Technique. This study employed the Grounded Theory approach to examine written output using codes from the three (3) phases of coding – Open, Axial, and Selective Coding. After the coding process, significant themes emerged and were subjected to analysis. Findings revealed that the most common difficulties encountered by the participants when developing a topic are grammatical errors, inappropriate use of political concepts, and inappropriate choice of vocabulary. It is also found out that unnecessary shift in tense, ambiguous pronoun reference, loose sentence, sentence fragment, dangling modifier, and wordy sentence are next in line.  Also, participants chose to develop their topics in Exposition, Narration, Analogy, and Examples. More so, participants also found it hard to create an issue when given a Philippine Politics and Governance writing task due to language constraints evident in their writing outputs.