An Action Research in Improving Grade 8 Students’ Writing Skills with Proper Punctuation Usage through Explicit Instruction

The purpose of this descriptive quantitative study was to address the punctuation proficiency among high school students. The study participants were 34 seventh-grade students from Baltazar Nicor Valenzuela National High School. The study introduced an intervention called Explicit Instruction to improve students writing skills in punctuation usage. The research employed a quantitative, pre-experimental one-group pretest-posttest design to assess the intervention's effectiveness. According to Thyer (2012), this design entails measuring a single group prior to and subsequent to an intervention to ascertain changes. The pre-test and post-test results showed a significant difference: the pre-test had a mean score of 21.5 (SD = 3.45), while the post-test showed a mean score of 41.2 (SD = 4.88). The statistical analysis revealed t (39) =19.2, p<.001 significant improvement in punctuation usage following the explicit instruction intervention. These findings suggest the intervention effectively improved students’ punctuation usage. To provide a comprehensive understanding of the students' insights during and after the intervention, the researchers conducted interviews with 10 selected individuals. From the responses gathered, five themes emerged regarding how the use of explicit instruction and the proposed intervention improve students writing skills in punctuation usage: (1) enhanced clarity and organization of student written outputs, (2) use of step-by-step approach in explicit instruction, (3) Increased Student participation, (4) Enhanced Lesson Comprehension, and (5) Improves memory retention. In addition, five themes emerged regarding the insights of students: (1) holistic and inclusive development of writing skills across subjects and grade levels, (2) stakeholder support in literacy interventions, (3) development of writing awareness and habits through the intervention, (4) Improving School Support with Teaching Materials and Tools, and (5) Clearer Writing Confidence.