COGNITIVE CONSIDERATION IN PERSUADING READERS IN ARGUMENTATIVE WRITING

The objectives of this study were to describe the ways the writers persuade readers in argumentative writing and to elaborate the cognitive considerations that the writers employ in persuading readers in argumentative writing. This study followed the theory of Ramage et.al (2016) about the ways of persuading readers which comprises of (1) text structure; (2) reasoning; and (3) persuasive appeal; and the cognitive considerations in writing argumentative text by Deane et.al (2008) that included: (a) readers’ domain knowledge and text structure; (b) readers’ attitude toward the subject; (c) textual cues; and (d) reasoning. The data of this study were gathered by using elicitation technique, asking the 8th semester of undergraduate students, to write argumentative text under predetermined topic Social media should be banned with three intended readers, they were: Junior High School, Senior High School, and Undergraduate students. This study revealed that the subjects manipulated the text structure by presenting three-layered text structure of argumentative writing, and presenting the pseudo-evidence and organizing cause and effect relationship in terms of the reasoning aspect. In addition to the ways of persuading the readers, it was found that the subjects only have two kinds of cognitive consideration in writing argumentative text as to the scope of the study, they were: (a) readers’ domain knowledge and text structure; and (b) reasoning. These kinds of consideration were applied across all intended readers. The ways of persuading readers were also applied to all intended readers which meant that the subjects neither had specific cognitive consideration nor specific ways of persuading readers for specific readers.