Argumentative Writing as an Academic Routine in Nurturing Critical Thinking Skills of EFL Learners

Having proficient skill in argumentative writing is prominent for writing success. It is required in daily life for long life learning. The argumentative writing assists students to develop their critical thinking (henceforward, CT) which involves higher order thinking skills (hereafter, HOTS). This research aims at portraying how the CT elements areportrayed in the students’ argumentative writing. It is also in the attempt to reveal the development of their CT. In collecting the data, the sophomore students were involved, and their argumentative essays were investigated as the primary data. To support the data, interview and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) were implemented. The analysis is based on Stapleton’s criteria of CT (2001) which involve claims, reasons, evidences, recognition of opposing arguments and refutations, conclusion and fallacies. It was revealed that the students were proficient in making claims. The claims were the stated explicitly in the thesis statement combining with reasons. Moreover, they gave reasoning towards their claims and proposed refutations towards the opposing arguments. However, their insufficiency of reasons and evidence weakened their arguments in the essay. For the conclusion, they restated their claim which showed their position as the writer.In term of fallacies, most of them were in the form of irrelevance and over simplifications.