Students’ strategies and competence in writing compositions maribel Fontiveros-Malana, Ph. D

Table 6. Comparison in the extent of use of strategies in writing between male and female respondents.

Strategies	t-value	p-value	Decision
Prewriting	1.5582	0.1194	Not significant
Drafting/Writing	0.7950	0.4303	Not significant
Revising/Proofreading	0.3650	0.7168	Not significant

Significant at =0.05

Discussion:

There is no significant difference in the extent of use of strategies between male and female students. The probability values that are greater than the significant level (0.05) resulted to the rejection of the null hypothesis. This means that in so far as prewriting/drafting, writing, and revising/proofreading strategies are concerned, the extent by which male and female respondents use them is comparable. (Elaborate and RRL)
Table 7. Relationship in the extent of use of strategies and competence in writing compositions

Strategies in Writing	Narrative	Descriptive	Explanatory
PREWRITING
I generate ideas prior to writing.	0.1128*	0.1023	0.1211
I provoke discussion with my classmates with the intension to clarify my thoughts and opinions on what I write.	0.0044	0.0173	-0.0848
I look for some visual arts that could serve to frame my thoughts and ideas.	0.0341	0.1343*	0.0619
I enumerate all interesting ideas, concepts and impressions about what I want t write.	0.0588	0.1385*	0.0516
I do extensive reading of articles.	-0.0599	0.0026	0.0516
I recall captivating dialogues of characters in movies.	-0.0096	-0.0544	0.0634
I provoke a discussion with my professor about things that I want to write.	-0.0793	-0.0406	-0.0812
DRAFTING/WRITING
I write the title first of my composition	0.0120	-0.1167*	-0.0400
I write the draft of main concepts and the title later.	-0.0116	0.0500	0.0477
I write the whole text with due consideration to the composition’s parts/elements/components.	0.1302*	0.1664*	0.0771
REVISING/PROOFREADING
I read loudly as I check on the mistakes of the composition.	0.1334*	0.0052	0.0535
I focus my reading on the right choice of function words.	0.0516	-0.0704	-0.0596
I focus my attention on grammar rules (e.g. subject-verb agreement, tense, etc.)	-0.0064	0.0803	-0.0611
I focus my attention to the integration of figurative language and symbolism.	-0.0332	0.0118	-0.0092
I focus my attention to parallelism of thoughts and structure of sentences.	-0.0396	0.0013	-0.1121
I allow others to read my composition and ask them honest to goodness comments for improvement.	-0.1046	0.0249	-0.0124
I read several times to allow my intellectual consciousness sink into the conceptual and contextual frame of my composition.	0.0955	0.1318*	0.1435*

*significant at 0.05

Table 7 presents the relationship in the extent of use of strategies and competence of the students in writing compositions. It can be gleaned from the table that there are strategies in writing which are significantly correlated to competence in writing compositions. The computed correlation coefficient based on Pearson-r is greater than the critical value at 0.05 significance. Hence, the hypothesis is rejected.

Specifically, it can be noted that the positive significant correlation denotes that students who are more competent in writing narrative compositions use different strategies in writing to a greater extent such as generating ideas prior to writing (0.1128), writing the whole text with due consideration to the composition’s parts/elements/components (0.1302), and checking by reading loudly on the mistakes of the composition (0.1334). These strategies are under the prewriting, drafting, and revising/proofreading parts, respectively.
On the other hand, the more competent are the students in descriptive writing, their extent of use of the strategies in writing such as looking for some visual arts that could serve to frame thoughts and ideas (0.1343), enumerating all interesting ideas, concepts, and impressions about what to write (0.1385), writing the whole text with due consideration to the composition’s parts/elements/components (0.1664), and reading several times to allow intellectual consciousness sink into the conceptual and contextual frame of the composition (0.1318) is greater. The significant negative correlation (0.1167), meanwhile, indicates that the less competent the students in descriptive writing use writing the title first of their composition as a strategy in writing to a lesser extent, and vise versa.
Finally, in terms of writing explanatory compositions, the competence level of the students significantly correlate to some strategies in writing. Students who are more skilled in explanatory writing generate ideas prior to writing (0.1211) and read several times to allow their intellectual consciousness sink into the conceptual and contextual frame of the composition (0.1435) as a writing strategy more often. However, the negatively significant correlation (-0.1121) manifests that the lesser skilled is a student in explanatory composition writing, the more often he/she focuses his/her attention to parallelism of thoughts and structures of sentences as a strategy in revising/proofreading, and vise-versa. (Back up with RRL)

Writers new to English begin by learning very simple sentence structures. These structures are used to express ideas in straightforward ways, but do not allow for much complexity. Because of this, they are often regarded as "low-level" English.

In school, native and non-native speakers of English are encouraged to use more "sophisticated" written English to reflect their growing proficiency in the language. Sophisticated language is especially important to use when trying to pass standardized tests of English. Using only "simple" sentence structures will result in a low score. This situation encourages the idea that more complicated grammar is evidence of more elevated thought. At universities around the world, students are taught to write with "powerful" words and "complex" grammatical structures.
Of course, using more complex, sophisticated English is not a bad thing in itself, but it can make complex ideas more difficult for less proficient readers to understand. This is particularly important to consider when we are writing up our research, because we often need to express complex ideas and arguments clearly. Writing in a simple way lets us distinguish between complexity of expression and complexity of meaning.
In this article, we'll look at some of the ways to write simply but still with authority in your field.
It is easy to write simple things simply. It is a bit harder to write simple things in complicated ways, but there are many courses that teach students how to do this. And, of course, most complex subjects will be written about in complicated and complex ways. Why? Because it is very difficult to write about complex subjects simply.
There are, however, some writing strategies to make your writing simpler without sacrificing your ideas.
We discuss 5 writing strategies below. We'll return with more strategies in later articles