Critical and Creative Literacy in Argumentative Writing Course: Students’ Needs

Abstract

Critical and creative literacy (CCL) is crucial for students as it focuses on critical and creative thinking processes and the object of what to think in balance concern. While many teaching models might integrate critical literacy in teaching English, its practical implementation in argumentative writing course is not well-explored. In an argumentative writing course, critical reading tasks of argumentative writing models can facilitate the thinking process and their English development for constructing a new one with a localized issues for contextualized the learning. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the students' learning needs to improve their CCL level as well as their argumentative writing skills development. The study involved 124 university students from four universities in Lombok, Indonesia, using a survey-style research design. Data was collected through questionnaires and in-depth interviews and analyzed qualitatively with a five-Likert scale analysis method. The analysis revealed significant gaps between the current and desired conditions of students' CCL skills integrated into the argumentative writing course, indicating high needs. The results of the needs analysis could be used to develop a conceptual framework for promoting CCL integration into the course.