Students' Writing Strategies to Implement Critical Thinking in an Argumentative Essay

dr.santi chairani djonhar,m.a., dr.akhmad haqiqi ma'mun, m.pd.;

The research was conducted to identify the students’ strategies in implementing critical thinking when writing an argumentative essay. The methods used is qualitative approach which involved the case study method, the researcher collected the data using retrospect, interview, and questionnaire. The participants whom were involved in this research were a Business School students in Serpong. The researcher chose 5 students who were asked to do the retrospect and interview about their strategies in implementing critical thinking when writing an argumentative essay.
The result of this study shows that, first, in implementing critical thinking when writing an argumentative essay, the students used Meta-cognitive, Cognitive, Social/Effective, Communicative and Rhetorical strategies. Meta-cognitive strategies are strategies that involved planning, monitoring and evaluation. Meanwhile, Cognitive Strategies are strategies that involved organization, summarizing, retrieval, elaborating and revising. Social/Effective Strategies are strategies that involved Cooperation. Communicative strategies are strategies that involved Sense of Readers. Rhetorical Strategies are strategies that involved genre Consideration. Second, the study also showed that in implementing critical thinking when writing an argumentative essay, the researcher found that the students mostly used cognitive strategies in writing their argumentative essay. The researcher suggests to the teacher to introduce critical thinking as an effective way to boost their cognitive strategies in writing. Moreover, the students might find that critical thinking improve their ability in writing an argumentative essay. It is also recommended that there should be more research about the use of critical thinking strategies to improve students’ skill in writing, and other language learning skills.