The Efficacy of COW Strategy in Teaching Writing to Civil Engineering Students: A Case Study

Abstract

This study examines the effectiveness of the Collect, Organize, write strategy (hereafter referred to as COW) in improving the descriptive writing skills of Building Construction students in the Engineering department of Ujung Pandang State Polytechnic (PNUP) in teaching Technical English in vocational higher education in Indonesia. The research design used was pre-experimental with a pre-test, treatment, and post-test approach. A total of 27 students participated in the study, which focused on improving writing skills across five dimensions: content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. The COW strategy was applied during five instructional sessions, covering topics such as workshop equipment and heavy equipment description. Data were collected through student writing assessments that were analysed using statistical tests, including t-tests and frequency distributions. The results showed a significant improvement in students' writing ability from pre-test to post-test. The average score increased from 33.85 in the pre-test to 51.77 in the post-test, with marked improvement in all five dimensions of writing. The greatest improvement was seen in content and vocabulary skills, where 59.26% of the students achieved the "Good" or "Fair" classification after the intervention. Meanwhile, grammar skills showed a bimodal distribution, and mechanics showed uniform improvement across all participants. Assessment was conducted using a rubric that measured each writing dimension separately.