"poor ability" is correct and can be used in written English.
For example, "Despite his poor ability, he was determined to finish the race."
Another is its poor ability to attract young people into a research career.
Humans generally have a poor ability to understand the probability of events, and websites are fairly poor at communicating them.
A child with a poor ability to delay might instead focus on the cookie and its sweet taste.
But in contrast, some health insurance systems have a very poor ability to contain costs, which consequently spiral out of control.
My 11-year-old son is extremely bright and has much academic potential, but he suffers from performance-anxiety, a poor ability to concentrate and low self-esteem.
Poor ability to avoid mal-operation.
Patients with osteoarthritis have a poor ability to kneel preoperatively.
However, this result also confirms reports that calcite has poor ability to accommodate gold nanoparticles [16].
They concluded that there was poor ability of the suture to maintain syndesmotic reduction.
The participants demonstrated poor ability to simplify once they had completed differentiation.
Conversely species in the group have a poor ability to seed dispersal.
