PREVALENCE OF STUDENTS WITH DIFFICULTY IN ORGANIZING THOUGHTS, GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION, PARAGRAPH WRITING, AND MEANINGFUL WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

Abstract

            The study looked at the prevalence of elementary level students' difficulties with organizing thoughts, using grammar and punctuation, creating coherent paragraphs, and communicating meaning in writing. A cross-sectional survey design was used which was quantitative. Multistage stratified random sampling was used to select a sample of 511 students from public and private elementary schools in the Punjab. Students were evaluated by teachers using a 50-item questionnaire that measured organization of thoughts, grammar and sentence construction, writing and punctuation conventions, and paragraph writing and meaningful communication. The following statistical analyses were used: frequencies, percentages, descriptive statistics, independent-samples t test, one-way analysis of variance, reliability analysis, exploratory factor analysis, correlation, and multiple regression analysis. The results of the illustrative analyses revealed that 51.5% of students were in the moderate difficulties group and 24.3% were in the high difficulties group. Organizing thoughts and paragraph writing emerged as the most prominent areas. Students with identified language, learning, or writing difficulties obtained significantly higher scores. The study concluded that explicit strategy instruction, sentence construction, grammar in context, punctuation practice, paragraph frameworks, and structured revision were required at the elementary level (Graham et al., 2024; Karakuş, 2023; Kim et al., 2022).