Abstract
An investigation on the difficulty experienced in practical research writing among senior high school students of Kalingagan Senior High School was conducted to determine which of the factors identified influenced students’ inability to write research proposals and manuscript in terms of teacher’s teaching competence, the subject matter, students’ study habits, and evaluative measures utilized by the research teacher. Computations of mean values were utilized in this study.
Results of the investigation revealed that students in research need supplementary learning materials to develop and enhance their research writing skills. The students’ trepidation is addressed when sufficient research writing and writeshop activities are provided. Students’ inability to comprehend and understand technical terms used in research are minimized if a well-designed instructional and learning material such as workbooks and manuals in research are developed.
Based on findings, it was recommended that instructional and learning materials in research such as workbooks and manuals should be designed, developed, and utilized to provide opportunities to students develop competencies in writing different parts of research proposal and full blown thesis.
Key words: Confluence of Factors Affecting Thesis Writing Difficulty
Introduction
Research writing is one of the most challenging and interesting tasks of all academic disciplines in senior high schools, colleges and universities. The quality of instruction of senior high school in the Philippines and in higher education institutions (HEIs) is gauged not only on the academic qualifications and work experiences of the teaching personnel but also on the quality of researches written and conducted by the professors and students.
According to Aquino (2010), teachers and professors should teach based on the outcomes of the researches, thus, they are called master teachers and professors precisely because they profess certain expertise in their fields of specialization. It should always be noted that the purpose of research is to serve man and its goal is for good life (Calderon, 2013). This means that research should be conducted to provide avenue for social and economic development of the people in the community.
Research writing is a skill that has to be developed through patience, time, and reasonable amount of research materials available and provided by the research teachers coupled with students’ interest and willingness to test and verify theories and concepts as well as their motivation to contribute to the science of knowledge (Crawford, 2012).
However, there are challenges students in research may experience not only in the course of writing their research proposals but in learning how to write the first few parts of research coupled with limited learning materials available within reach and other factors such as teacher’s teaching competence, student’s attitude towards the subject, and the evaluative measurements employed by the professors in their research classes.
It is in the light of this circumstance that, the researcher is motivated to conduct an investigation on the confluence of factors affecting difficulty of writing research paper among senior high school students of Kalingagan Senior High School who are enrolled in Practical Research 1 during the First Semester of School Year 2019-2020.
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