have poor argumentative writing skill. Because having critical thinking will make the students be able to develop the idea critically and creatively.
D. Limitation
There were some limitations that were found in this study. The first limitation was the number of participants which were only 35 students. Although
the number of participants has already met the requirements, it is still better to have great numbers of participants to make the result more valid and credible. In
correlational study, the greater numbers of the participants, the more valid and reliable are the data.
2
Next, the critical thinking test instrument which was conducted from Cornell Critical Thinking Test CCTT also became the limitation in this study.
The language used in CCTT was English in which a foreign language for the participants. This, might cause students had problems in understanding the
questions of the test and influenced the test results. In the other researches which used the same instrument CCTT
—the research that was conducted by Malaysian researchers Rosyanti and Rosna Awang: 2008, Rozaidi Ismail:
2003 — used the participants’ native language, i.e. Bahasa Malaysia. Therefore,
the research finding and results may be more accurate. It is because using participants’ native language leads the participants more understand the test
questions. Another problem came from the raters who were rate and score the
students’ writing. The second rater who was the researcher herself seems to be less qualified to score the students writing because of her inexperienced in
assessing writing. Therefore, it is better to have the rater who has experience and better understanding about assessing writing.
Of course, a large limitation in the study could come from many factors such as students’ condition and situation when conducting the tests both critical
thinking test and argumentative writing test and the environment in which the
2
Gay, op. cit., p. 207.
tests took place. Furthermore, those factors, limitations and problems stated above influence the credibility, reliability and the validity of this research finding.
