DEVELOPING
CRITICAL THINKING ABILITY THROUGH ARGUMENTATIVE WRITING
The
importance of developing students' critical thinking skills (CT) has made
English language teachers as Foreign Languages (EFL) strive to integrate
critical thinking skills in supporting them. This research underlines the role
of language as a means of thinking, evaluating, and evaluating. Approved
research to discuss how critical thinking elements are in the text and examine
the development of critical thinking in the text. The results show that the argument is often weak because it
is not supported by sufficient reason and evidence. An essay is very likely to
contain many arguments. However, the logical relationship between the arguments
is not clear in the essay and even many students fail to show the relationship.
Students are also weak in terms of refutation skills because they tend to
accept claims from other sources without trying to evaluate and question them. This
study seeks to link the interconnection between critical thinking (CT) and
language. The close correlation between thinking (cognition) and language
development has long been recognized by scholars and educators, because through
language people know the world and express what they think. This is
particularly relevant for argumentative writing in English as a Foreign
Language (EFL) context, because to make argumentative writing people need to
have higher-order thinking skills and higher levels of foreign language
abilities (see Atkinson, 1997; Chamot, 1995; Tarvin & Al-Arishi, 1991). Facioned
defines critical thinking as "purposeful assessment, self-regulation that
results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as
explanation of consideration, conceptual, methodological, criterological, or contextual
considerations on which that judgment is based" (1990, p. 3). Beyer
defines it as the ability to make "sensible judgments" (1995, p. 8).
Thus, critical thinkers must be able to assess, evaluate, and question ideas or
thoughts based on credible evidence by establishing a logical relationship
between statements or data. This ability is very important in developing
language competence, especially in building arguments and inferring conclusions
from one or several premises. Stapleton (2001, pp. 536-539) proposed six
elements of critical thinking in written texts. A. Arguments: claims supported
by a reason. In academic writing, arguments are usually the main idea, often
called "claims" or "thesis statements". b. Reason:
statements used to support claims and generally answer why claims must be
trusted. c. Evidence: statement or statement that reinforces the argument. d.
Recognition of Opposition and Disclaimer: Oppose opposing points of view or
offer alternative interpretations to those stated in claims. e. Conclusion: a
statement or set of statements in which the writer establishes what he wants
the reader to believe. f. Error: error in reasoning. The outline of the essay
writing course that is the setting of the study places CT as an important
learning outcome. In doing so, the process of writing several steps is applied
on the basis of the more they write, the more they practice, the more they
think. Because higher-order thinking skills are increasingly needed to succeed
in a knowledge-based society, it is very important to develop CT skills so as
to increase students' exposure to the use of English in academic and everyday
use and to the world in which they live. This study shows that the integration
of aspects of CT in argumentative writing of EFL has helped students develop
not only their critical thinking skills but also their English competence.
Without adequate training in critical thinking, EFL students may lack
confidence in their academic lives and lose the opportunity to climb the ladder
in a global workplace that has become more challenging.
Susana Widyastuti
Fakultas Bahasa dan Seni, Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta
email: susana_widyastuti@uny.ac.id
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