The Efficacy of the University-level Remedial Writing Program

Abstract

Remedial writing is a course for post-secondary students lacking skills necessary to perform college-level work at the level required by the institution. This is an experimental study that sought to find whether university-level remedial writing program is effective in enhancing the academic success of the students. It also sought to find which student’s gender predict student achievement in writing skills. This study employed the pretest–posttest research design. One intact summer class comprising 36 post-secondary students from public and private schools who were failed from the College Admission Test are the subject of the study.  All sessions were held three hours daily from Sunday to Thursday for five weeks. The sessions were a sort of seminar-write shop with the students; it’s a learner-centered activity. The instrument was a researcher-made and was subjected to validity and reliability analyses. Necessary revisions on the instruments were done to ensure that they were valid and reliable. All instruments were administered as pretest and posttest. A non-parametric statistical test particularly the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test was used to test the difference in the pretest and posttest result of the remedial writing program. The test of significance conducted revealed that students exposed in the remedial writing program performed significantly better after the remediation proper. The t-test was also used to determine that gender predicts student achievement from writing skills. Results showed that female students performed better than the male counterparts in the remedial writing program. It is highly recommended that University-level remedial writing program should be conducted to underprepared students for college entry.

Key words: Remedial writing program, university-level