Appraisal in Students’ Argumentative Writing

The purpose of this research was to find out 1) the types of attitude used in
students’ argumentative writing, 2) The realization of attitude in students’
argumentative writing, and 3) The factors affecting the attitude in students’
argumentative writing. The research is done by using descriptive qualitative
design. The data source of the research is the sixth semester students of English
Education Faculty Study Program at State University of Medan academic year
2017 which has twenty-three students as the sample. The instrument for collecting
data is audio recorder. The data are analyzed by using Miles, Huberman and
Saldana theory which are consisted of four activities such as data collection, data
condensation, data display, and conclusions drawings/ verifying. The results of
this research show that 1) There are 3 types of attitude resources found in
students’ argumentative writing. Those 3 types of attitude are affect, judgement,
and appreciation. Among 3 types of the attitude, appreciation was dominantly
used in the students’ argumentative writing, 2) The attitude can be realized in
positive and negative. In the students’ argumentative writing with the topic about
internet, there was more positive attitude than negative attitude, and 3) The
attitude of the students in the argumentative writing was affected by 2 factors. The
first is situational circumstances surrounding performance of the behavior and
then the secondary characteristics of the disposition. Mostly attitude was affected
by the situational circumstances surrounding performance of the behavior.