READABILITY OF TEXTS FOR THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMA NEGERI 3 MEDAN.

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READABILITY OF TEXTS FOR THE TENTH GRADE

STUDENTS OF SMA NEGERI 3 MEDAN

A THESIS

Submitted as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan

By:

IRMA ANDRIYANI NASUTION

Registration Number: 2121121004

ENGLISH AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS

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i ABSTRACT

Nasution, Irma Andriyani. 2121121004. Readability of Texts for the Tenth Grade Students of SMA Negeri 3 Medan. A Thesis. English Education Study Program. Faculty of Language and Arts. State University of Medan. 2016.

This research was quantitatively and qualitatively conducted to analyze the readability of texts for the tenth grade students of SMA Negeri 3 Medan. The sources of the data were seven texts taken from students’ textbook entitled Bahasa Inggris. The texts in the second semester are written both in Recount and Narrative genres. The data were analyzed using Flesch Reading Ease Formula which is focused on the average sentence length and the average number of the syllables per words. The findings of this research show that the texts were grouped into five levels, they are Standard, Easy, Difficult, Very Easy and Fairly Easy. The average readability score for all texts is 70 which implies that the texts are in Standard level and are therefore compatible with the theory of Flesch which indicates that the texts are readable. However, in line with Flesch’ theory, the tenth grade students should be given a text which category belongs to Fairly Difficult and in relation to that, it is concluded that the texts in the textbook are readable yet they are inappropriate to be used for the tenth grade students.

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ii ABSTRAK

Nasution, Irma Andriyani. 2121121004. Readability of Texts for the Tenth Grade Students of SMA Negeri 3 Medan. Skripsi. Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris. Fakultas Bahasa dan Seni. Universitas Negeri Medan. 2016.

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisa tingkat keterbacaan teks yang terdapat di buku teks siswa kelas X SMA Negeri 3 Medan. Penelitian dilakukan dengan menggunakan metode kualitatif dan kuantitatif. Data dalam penelitian ini adalah tujuh teks yang diambil dari buku teks siswa semester dua yang berjudul Bahasa Inggris. Jenis teks yang dipelajari adalah Recount dan Narrative. Data-data yang diperoleh kemudian dianalisis menggunakan teori Flesch Reading Ease Formula dengan menghitung rata-rata dari panjang kalimat serta suku kata dari setiap kata. Hasil dari analisis menunjukkan bahwa ketujuh teks dikelompokkan kedalam lima kategori yaitu Standard, Easy, Difficult, Very Easy dan Fairly Easy. Rata-rata skor keterbacaan dari ketujuh teks tersebut adalah 70 yang kemudian mengindikasikan bahwa secara umum teks-teks yang terdapat di dalam buku teks siswa masih dalam kategori Standard. Namun, sesuai teori Flesch, murid yang berada di kelas X seharusnya diberikan teks dengan level Fairly Difficult. Dengan demikian, dapat disimpulkan bahwa ketujuh teks tersebut memiliki tingkat keterbacaan yang Standard akan tetapi tidak sesuai untuk digunakan oleh murid yang berada di kelas X.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, the writer would like to express her greatest gratitude to Allah SWT for the health, knowledge and opportunity given by Him that this thesis can eventually be accomplished.

This thesis is submitted to the English Department in Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for taking the degree of Sarjana Pendidikan.

During the process of accomplishing this thesis, the writer would thank many people who have shown their care, support and assistance. Therefore, she would like to express her deepest gratitude and appreciation to:

 Prof. Dr. Syawal Gultom, M.Pd., the Rector of State University of Secretary of English and Literature Department, Syamsul Bahri, S.S., M.Hum., the Head of English Literature Study Program and Nora Ronita Dewi, S.Pd., S.S., M.Hum., as the Head of English Education Study Program, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan.  Prof. Amrin Saragih, M.A, Ph.D., her Thesis Consultant as well as

academic advisor for the consistent support, advice, and suggestion. Dr. Anni Holila Pulungan, M.Hum., her Second Thesis Consultant for her sincere motivation, encouragement, criticism and suggestion during this thesis writing process right from the very beginning.

 Prof. Dr. Busmin Gurning, M.Pd., her thesis examiner whose valuable inputs and comments have enlightened her to accomplish this thesis.  All Lectures of English and Literature Department for the knowledge,

guidance and advice in the academic years.

 Ahmad Alwi Umri Nasution and Hermayanti, her beloved parents, Wirdha Annisa Nasution and Uswatun Hafina Nasution, her lovely younger sisters and all her relatives for the everlasting love, prayer as well as moral and material support in her whole life.

 Siti Zulfah Sulaiman, English teacher in SMAN 3 Medan for giving her a great help during the research and data collection process.

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 Her best friends Iza, Nadya, Flo, Rika, Dara, Geby, Dika and Naya as well as her one-step-closer mates Anggi, Sisil, Kak Ai, Nurul, Theresia, Yeslika and Jejen for their valuable support, laugh, advice and motivation throughout her ups and downs.

 All her brothers and sisters in HMJ-BSI UNIMED, specifically her debating mates in EDDC, Sukma Septian Nasution, M.Pd., Elnoviamy, S.Pd., Isma Eriyanti, S.Pd., Neza, Cucu, Putri, Arief and Siti, for the togetherness and unforgettable stories they have shared.

 All her classmates in Regular B 2012 for the togetherness and sad-happy days they have spent in her four-year study.

The writer realizes that her thesis is still far from being perfect, therefore she warmly welcomes any constructive suggestions that will improve the quality of this thesis. She hopes that this thesis would be beneficial for further research, particularly in the field of English language teaching.

Medan, August 2016 The writer,

Irma Andriyani Nasution

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LIST OF TABLES

Pages

Table 2.1 Flesch’s Reading Ease Score ... 22

Table 4.1 The Readability Score based on Flesch Reading Ease Formula ... 30

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LIST OF APPENDIX

Pages

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1 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. The Background of the Study

Reading, as well as listening, speaking, writing plays a significant role in

developing students‟ English mastery. Alyousef (2006:64) defines reading as an

“interactive” process between a reader and a text which leads to automaticity or

(reading fluency). In this process, the reader interacts dynamically with the text as

s/he tries to elicit the meaning and where various kinds of knowledge are being

used: linguistic or systematic knowledge (through bottom-up processing) as well

as schematic knowledge (through to-down processing).

The above statement implies that mastering reading skill will allow students

to directly improve their other skills of English because the more students read,

the faster they will be able to widen their vocabularies and use of language to

enrich their knowledge of English. For that reason, to facilitate the needs of

students to improve their reading skill, the content of English reading texts in

students‟ textbook must be maximized to cover the students‟ needs.

One of the primary source of teaching English as a foreign language in

Indonesia is textbook since it is dominantly used in the process of teaching and

learning. Diniah (2013:73) defines textbook as something important in the

teaching and learning process that teachers tend to use textbook in their whole

teaching and learning process without selecting and adapting appropriate materials

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In addition, Tok (2010:509) also states that textbooks play a prominent role

in the teaching/learning process and they are the primary agents of conveying the

knowledge to the learners. Besides, one of the basic functions of textbooks is to

make the existence knowledge available and apparent to the learner in a selected,

easy and organized way.

The two stated theories have made to us clear that the existence of textbooks

is crucial for both teachers and students. Most teachers still choose textbooks as

their main guide while teaching the students. The reasons vary. Some teachers say

the textbooks have already provided good materials as well as been in line with

the existed curriculum and syllabus. Some also point out that they do not have

much time to prepare additional materials so they just follow the materials in the

textbooks. On the other hand, for students, textbooks are the main source of study

since their teachers will mostly take the materials provided in the textbooks. Due

to its importance, English textbooks should demonstrate quality materials in order

to support students to improve their English mastery.

Unfortunately, when the use of textbooks is claimed as something important

in instructional activities, it does not directly guarantee that all materials in

textbooks have a good quality. Most of the published textbooks contain

inappropriate materials which are not suitable to the curriculum and syllabus.

Furthermore, the materials in the textbook do not also match to the level of

students which then cause to the failure of achieving students‟ motivation to

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Richard (2001:2) explains that a book may be ideal in one situation because

it matches the needs of that situation perfectly. It has just the right amount of

material for the program, it is easy to teach, it can be used with little preparation

by inexperienced teachers, and it has an equal coverage of grammar and the four

skills. Richard believes that in order to achieve the best understanding to the

materials that are going to be used in instructional activities, the content of the

textbooks should fulfill the objectives of the language learning as well as match to

the target learners‟ needs. He, furthermore, emphasizes that materials in the

textbooks must be well-written and well-organized.

To put it simple, a good English reading material is understandable and

comprehensible. The materials of the textbooks must contain a suitable and

interesting topic that meets students‟ ability. Moreover, the use of words and the

length of the passage must also be the aspects to be considered about so that the

passage can ease students in understanding and comprehending the text.

It has been clear that a good English textbook with good materials followed

will contribute to the successful of students to achieve the learning objectives. In

other words, the existence of an appropriate English reading material will directly

affect to students‟ willingness to study. Thus, analyzing the quality of the reading

materials is felt important to know whether the published English reading material

that has been used by teachers and students can be categorized as a proper source

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Basically, the main objective of a writer to write a text is to provide

information to readers. In order to be able to convey the main idea of text, a writer

should also make sure that the text s/he is being designed to contain informative

and interesting topics. Besides, the text must also match to the target. That is why

during the process of designing the text, the researcher must be careful to the

words choices as well as the sentence lengths.

In the perspective of readers, the reason why they read a passage is because

they want to gain new information and knowledge. In order to achieve the goals,

readers will first choose whether the topic interests them or not. Furthermore, they

will also consider about the content of the passage, whether it is easily understood

or not. Readers are often willing to widen their knowledge by reading something,

but the reading materials in which they are interested in are too difficult.

For the stated reasons, the researcher thinks that it is important to measure

the difficulty level of a text, especially for academic level so that English teachers

can predict the level of the passages in the textbook, whether they are difficult,

plain or easy.

The degree of difficulty lays in a text is called readability. Dubay (2004:3)

says that readability is what makes some texts easier to read than others.

Zamanian and Heydari (2012:43) also state that all in all, readability studies are

concerned with ensuring that a given piece of writing reaches and affects its

audience in the way that the author intends. In conclusion, readability is the level

of text difficulty in which the difficulty of a text should be adjusted to whom the

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It also discusses about how a text can be easily understood and comprehended by

students in order to convey the primary information based on writer‟s intention.

In analyzing the level of text difficulty, there must be many factors involved.

Dubay (2004:14) explains that to check the readability of reading passages must

be very complex due to its factors. He, then, added that the most affected factors

are the sentence and word length, the students‟ understanding and background of

texts, the types of material that students want to read, and many others.

Therefore, to know how readable a reading passage is, and to know whether

the text has been appropriate to the level of readers or not, it can be analyzed

using readability approaches, namely: (1) Readability Formula which aims to

analyze the level of texts‟ difficulty in students‟ textbook; (2) Cloze procedure

which functions to know students‟ understanding and comprehension to the

reading texts by providing some tests, and (3) Judgments which aims at seeking

for further information about the readability of a text based on the perspectives of

experts ( teachers, librarians, etc).

Finally, after revealing the issues, the researcher conducted an observation

and interviewed an English teacher and some tenth grade students of SMA Negeri

3 Medan. The teacher explained that some students can understand and

comprehend the reading texts, yet, there are also some of them who still fail in

getting the meaning of the texts due to the vocabularies. She also claimed that

even though the texts are easily understood, they will not be enough to achieve a

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The war continued, and the Acehnese declared Holy War against the Dutch, and were engaged in guerilla warfare. Undersupplied, Teuku Umar surrendered to the Dutch forces on September 30, 1893 along with 250 of his men. The Dutch forces on welcomed him and appointed him as a commander, giving him the title of Teuku Umar Johan Pahlawan. However, Teuku Umar secretly planned to betray the Dutch. Two years later Teuku Umar set out to assault Aceh, but he instead deserted with his troops taking with them heavy equipment, weapons, and ammunition, using these supplies to help the Achenese. This is recorded in Dutch history as “Het verraad van Teukoe Oemar” (the treason of Teuku Umar).

From the above paragraph, the students noticed some difficult words in the

paragraph such as engaged „terlibat‟, warfare „perang‟, undersupplied „karena

kekurangan alat perang‟, surrendered „menyerah‟, betray „menghianati‟, assault

„menyerang‟, deserted „membelot‟, troops „tentara‟, and treason „penghianatan‟.

They explained that they seldom and almost never find and listen to those words

in their daily conversation. Finally, the existence of those unfamiliar words makes

students difficult in translating and understanding the words. The failure of

students to grasp the meaning of some vocabularies listed in a text will then cause

to students‟ failure to understand and comprehend the real meaning of a text. If

that happens, students will find it hard to improve their reading comprehension

ability due to the appearance of the low frequency words which they do not

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Therefore, the researcher intends to know whether or not the reading

materials in students‟ textbook have been appropriate to their grade and thus, she

is interested in conducting a research which focuses on analyzing the reading

texts‟ readability used by the tenth grade students of SMA Negeri 3 Medan using

the Flesch Reading Ease Formula.

B. The Problems of the Study

Based on the background of the study, the problems of this research are

formulated as the following:

1. How is the readability of the texts for the tenth grade students of SMA

Negeri 3 Medan?

2. How is the readability level adjusted to the present needs of the

students?

C. The Objectives of the Study

In line with the problems of the study, the objectives of this research are:

1. To identify the readability of the texts for the tenth grade students of

SMA Negeri 3 Medan.

2. To analyze the adjustment of readability level to the present needs of the

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D. The Scope of the Study

This research will be focused on the analysis of the reading texts‟ readability

in the textbook used by the tenth grade students of SMA Negeri 3 Medan.

There are varied of readability approaches used by researchers to measure a

readability of a reading text and this research will only use one of three

approaches, namely: Readability Formula. There are also varied of readability

formulas which are commonly used, they are: Flesch Reading Ease Formula,

Gunning Fox Index, Dale and Chall Formula, Cloze Procedure, and so on.

However, this research will only implement Flesch Reading Ease Formula to

analyze the readability level of reading materials in the chosen textbook.

E. The Significance of the Study

It is expected that the findings of this study offer theoretical and practical

significance.

Theoretically, the findings can add new horizons in theories of language

learning, specifically theories of readability as a tool to measure and analyze the

quality of reading texts in a textbook. Practically, the findings can be references

for other researchers, mainly university students who are willing to conduct the

same research. In addition, they can also help teachers and principals to be more

aware in selecting textbooks so that the reading texts match to the grade of the

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48 CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

A. Conclusion

After analyzing the data, conclusions are drawn as the following:

1) The seven texts in the textbook are categorized to five levels; Very Easy

(1 text), Easy (2 texts), Fairly Easy (1 text), Standard (1 text) and

Difficult (2 texts). After calculating the average readability score, it is

found that the texts are categorized to Standard level with the average

score is 70. Then, based on the theory of Flesch, the reading texts are

readable for the students.

2) The result of the texts analysis showed that the average score for the

texts belongs to Standard level which means that the texts are not

appropriate for the tenth grade students. Based on the theory of Flesch,

the appropriate level for the tenth grade students should be in Fairly

Difficult. After revising five of seven texts, the researcher found that a

Very Easy text is changed to Easy. Other two texts which levels are

Difficult become Fairly Difficult. Two Easy texts are also changed to

Fairly Easy texts. The new level of the text might not still appropriate to

the tenth graders, yet, the improvement of the text’ level has, at least,

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B. Suggestion

In relation to the conclusions, suggestions are staged as the following:

1) Although the result of the analysis shows that the average texts are in

Standard level which means the texts are readable for the students, it is

still recommended that:

a. The English teacher should not only focus on the texts provided by

the school. The teachers are advised to enrich students’ reading

comprehension knowledge by providing materials from other sources

which are still equal to the students’ level.

b. It is important to be noted that the principal must be careful in

dealing with publishers to the textbooks offered by publishers. The

principal has to make sure that the textbooks have a good quality

before they are distributed to the students to be used in the

instructional activities.

c. Other researchers who are willing to conduct the same research

should explore and broaden their knowledge of readability. There are

still many readability formulas which can be used by researchers to

analyze the readability of particular textbooks.

2) In order to adjust the present needs of students to the reading materials,

the publishers and authors are expected to be really careful in designing

and considering the materials before publishing the textbook. They have

to also make sure that the reading materials have been appropriate as

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READABILITY OF TEXTS FOR THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMA NEGERI 3 MEDAN.