Managing Difficulties in Enhancing Writing Skills Among Ethnic Learners

This qualitative study employing narrative inquiry is devoted to confront the difficulties experienced by Blaan learners in enhancing writing skills. This aims to reveal the effects in their academic writing tasks and how these learners managed their problems. The participants are five (5) Blaan learners who live in Barangay Kinam, Malapatan, Sarangani Province and are enrolled in Kiahe Integrated School. These participants are purposively selected for they noticeably manifested behavior such as the inability to compose sentences in writing tasks and skipping the writing tasks given. Through in-depth interview, data were gathered and analyzed through thematic analysis. Findings showed that the informants experienced difficulties in spelling, lexical difficulty, poor grammar awareness, problems in using punctuation marks, and inadequacy of learning resources. Additionally, those problems have affected them that it lowered their self-esteem and decreased their academic performance. However, these learners managed those difficulties by levelling up their cognitive skill and seek support system. It is recommended for these learners to continue to upskill their cognitive skill through reading, composition writing, using the L2 regularly, and having adequate learning resources. For teachers, it is advisable to evaluate the writing proficiency of the learners at the earliest opportunity to devise appropriate interventions.