Written Report and Correspondence Errors of Technical Assistance (TA) Providers

Abstract

Writing reports and correspondence are just some of the tasks that technical assistance (TA) providers do as they accomplish their day-to-day duties and functions. This study investigates errors found in the documents written by the TA providers including coordinators, master teachers, head teachers, school heads, district supervisors, and division supervisors considering Error Analysis (EA) Model by Carl James (1998). The data were taken from 94 soft copies of purposively collected and classified documents according to types. Results revealed that the topmost written documents based on percentages as used in this study are memorandum, narrative reports, and letters although there are still others in accordance with their mandates and job descriptions specifically on their respective Key Results Areas (KRAs). There were errors identified in the written reports and correspondence of the TA providers in the sentence level which revolve on (1) grammar – which highlighted points pertaining to preposition, article, agreement, verb, pronoun, noun, redundancy, determiner, quantifier, sentences, and adjective, (2) punctuation – mainly revolved on comma, hyphen, colon, and other punctuations, (3) capitalization – that falls on changing or checking, and congruency on the capitalization of words, and (4) spelling – words from the sentences were marked check, change, and correct spellings. There were also errors in the paragraph level under (1) development – which errors generally include inconsistencies of the expected patterns, formats which were not in accordance with relevant issuances, reports were merely collected from the concerned persons, thoughts within the reports need to be polished for clarity, reports also need to be rechecked considering the flow and organization of ideas, and mechanical aspects, (2) coherence – connection of thoughts from the paragraph before and after paragraphs, and use of transitional markers (TM) to connect ideas, (3) unity – word/s change, join or merge, replace, and separate which is sometimes a result of typo errors, and (4) point of view - written in lower positions' point of view, and improper use of 1st, 2nd and 3rd persons. The writing skills enhancement program and activities offered to the TA providers, the conclusions and recommendations on the basis of the results are presented in the full paper.