The Influence of Verbal Ability on the Writing Achievement of Undergraduates of Federal University of Technology Owerri, Nigeria

This study investigated the extent to which verbal ability would influence the writing achievement of fresh undergraduate students of Federal University of Technology Owerri, Nigeria. The pretest, posttest, control group, quasi experimental design was employed for the study. A sample of 425 students from a population of 5300 newly admitted undergraduates from four different faculties and departments of the university were the study participants. Three departments were used as the experimental groups while one was the control. These faculties and departments were selected through simple random sampling. A writing achievement test and a verbal ability test were the instruments used for the study. The data were collected from the writing scores and verbal test scores of the participants and analysed using mean and standard deviation, as well as Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). From the results of the study, it was found that verbal ability level did not significantly affect the writing achievement of participants. The findings indicate that students who apply themselves to their studies can excel in their writing irrespective of their level of verbal ability. It was therefore recommended that teachers in the different educational institutions should encourage their students to become proficient in the different areas of language covered by the verbal ability tests as this would help the students excel in their tertiary courses, while on the other hand, students should apply themselves to their studies as hard work and not verbal ability level is a key determinant determine in performance and achievement in their English language and other courses.