Exploring the Link Between Critical Thinking and Argumentative Writing Skills

Abstract

Critical thinking (CT) is now concerned as a learning necessity which needs a great attention. One of various benefits that can be obtained from it is, CT eases both educators and learners to set the progress of learning in order to achieve a good result. In case of writing, CT is needed to help writers in choosing a logical ideas which might be based on facts, theories, and research articles related to what they are going to approach. This current research is conducted since the writer intents to investigate the link between critical thinking and argumentative writing skills on the 4th semester of English department students at University of Islam Malang. This research study dealt with quantitative design since it was used to gather numerical data. The present study used correlation and independent sample t-test as the research design. There were 30 English department students participated in this research selected through random sampling. The data in this study were collected from the student’s score of critical thinking skill test and argumentative essay test by using SPSS version 22.0 to analyze the data. The essential findings revealed that 50% students (15) hold the medium level of CT while another 50% students (15) achieved the low level. Interestingly, the majority of both medium and low level of CT achieved excellent score in argumentative essay. Based on the correlational result, it was proven that there is no significant correlation between CT skill and argumentative writing skill with the p-value was (.065) was higher than the significant value (.05). Otherwise, the independent sample t-test result was shown that both critical thinkers and noncritical thinkers did not show significant difference on argumentative writing skill. It was shown that the sig. (2-tailed) value (.067) was higher than the p-value (0.05).Based on the result above, it means that both H0 which state that there was no significant correlation between critical thinking and argumentative writing skills and there was no significant correlation between critical thinkers and non-critical thinkers on argumentative writing skill were accepted while the Ha were rejected. To sum up, this current study found that both critical-thinkers and non-critical thinkers have similar ability in performing an argumentative writing. As well as critical-thinkers and non-critical thinkers, they hold an excellent score in argumentative writing. At last, it is hoped that the deeper investigation regarding the link between critical thinking and argumentative writing skills is needed. The future researcher are able to conduct a research by enlarging the participant of the study and lowering the difficulty level of the instrument.