Cognitive Consideration in Persuading Readers in Argumentative Writing

The aim of any genre of writing is absolutely an
important aspect that needs to be considered by writers.
However, keeping the aim of the writing in mind is not enough.
As writing is meant to be read by readers, a writer needs to
consider who their intended readers are. In line with this idea,
the objective of this study was to investigate the undergraduate
students’ ways of persuading readers in their argumentative
writing. This study used three kinds of cognitive consideration in
writing argumentative text (Connor, 1991) that involved readers’
domain knowledge and text structure, readers’ attitude toward
the subject, textual cues; and reasoning. The data of this study
was gathered by using elicitation technique asking the subjects,
the 8th semester of undergraduate students, to write 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 in EFL context only had two kinds of cognitive
consideration in writing argumentative text, they were readers’
domain knowledge and text structure;and reasoning. These kinds
of consideration were applied across all intended readers. It
meant that the subjects did not have specific cognitive
considerations for specific readers