Introduction:

The teaching and learning of writing requires a coordinated effort between managers, teachers and students. However, the willingness to participate in the latter will depend on whether it is able to identify their strengths and weaknesses in writing, which would affect their interest in improving or not improving said ability.

Objectives:

To know the strengths and weaknesses that undergraduate nursing students identify in themselves for the development of written communication skills in Spanish.

Methods:

Cross-sectional descriptive study. Semi-structured survey was applied to 261 undergraduate nursing students. The data were analyzed using frequency and contingency tables, using the software STATAv.14.

Results:

The main strength that students identified in themselves was good spelling (76.7%), while the main weakness was poor organization in the expression of ideas (45.3%). Lack of time emerged as a major difficulty; while, as an improvement strategy, the revision of guides. Although there was a consensus that writing is a fundamental skill to be developed in the individual, this ability was conditioned by the ability of the individual to make the need for its development his own, and also, the weaknesses to be improved were identified. If the student was too confident in his ability to write correctly, he hardly felt the need to train himself to perfect this knowledge.

Conclusions:

Considering the strengths and weaknesses that the student has at the time of writing, would allow the implementation of an improvement program with better and greater impact.

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