CHAPTER II REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE
6. Factors Involved in Evaluating Reading Materials
The importance of English textbook in teaching English as a foreign language makes the evaluation process is crucial. Since teachers have the responsibility to evaluate textbooks, they should be confident about the basis to judge that one textbook is better or more appropriate than another.
Basically, standard criteria that can be used by the teachers to help them in judging the materials in the English textbook for Senior High School students vary. Cunningsworth (in Yilmaz, 2005: 268) offers a set of guidelines that summarize the underlying principles with regard to material evaluation:
1. relate the teaching materials to your aims and objectives;
2. be aware of what language is for and select teaching materials which will help equip your students to use language effectively for their own purpose;
3. keep your students’ learning on mind;
4. consider the relationship between language, the learning process and the learner.
In accordance to those fundamental principles, teaching materials should ensure a possible fit between the individual needs of students and objectives of the teaching learning and the teacher. When the materials provided in the textbooks are inappropriate, the success of teaching and learning process is substantially lessened. In this case teachers should be able to select carefully and comprehensively the materials with fine quality in order that the competency targeted in curriculum can be achieved.
Related to the curriculum implemented now, the language teaching activities are text oriented. Here, students are demanded to be able to reconstruct their own texts in oral and written language based on the models given. Texts chosen for modeling should be appropriate for the level of the learner. It may not be difficult to find authentic reading materials but finding materials appropriate for the level of the learners may be a challenge.
In line with the idea above, Day (1994: 20) writes several factors that should be prior in selecting and choosing reading materials. They are interest, exploitability, readability (lexical knowledge, background knowledge, syntactic appropriateness, organization, discourse phenomena, and length), topic, political appropriateness, appearance (layout, type size and font).
Concerning the first factor stated above, it is clear that the most important factor in selecting a reading material is interest. Nuttal in Day (1994: 20), who
refers to interest as suitability of content, claims that having texts that interest learner is more critical than either the linguistic level of the text. It is very important to have interesting reading materials because they can motivate students to read. The text chosen should be able to stimulate personal involvement by arousing student interest and provoking strong, thoughtful reaction (Norris, 1995:
1).
Most students tend to read a text when they are interested in it. To find interesting reading materials, Nuttal in Day (1994: 20) recommends that the teacher attempt to discover if the passage will:
1. tell the students things they don’t already know,
2. introduce them to new and relevant idea, make them think about things they haven’t thought about before,
3. help them to understand the way other people feel or think, 4. make them want to read for themselves (to continue a story,
find out more about a subject).
The second factor requires teacher’s ability to relate the text with the objective of the lesson. Teachers need not use all activities or materials in the textbook but can pick and choose those appropriate for their class and the syllabus. According to Day (1994: 21) the text should allow the teacher to accomplish the objectives of the reading lesson.
In choosing the appropriate texts for Senior High School students, teachers can refer to what have been stated in curriculum, learning objectives and activities designed in the syllabus to achieve standard competency. It is predicted that teachers will have different kind of reading materials since they design the syllabus using School Based Curriculum as guidance and in accordance to the characteristics of the students and facilities provided in their school
Next, the teacher should consider the readability of the text since it is closely related to the notion of comprehensibility. According to Richards et al. in Mehrpour and Abdolmehdi (2004:1) readability refers to how easily written materials can be read and understood. It depends on many factors including (a) the average length of sentences in a passage, (b) the number of new words a passage contains, and (3) the grammatical complexity of the language used. If the combination of structural and lexical difficulty is too high above the students’
reading level, the odds are that they will not be able to identify with or enjoy the text because they will perceive is as being fraught with difficulty every step of the way (Norris, 1993:1).
Related to assessing relative ease or difficulty of reading texts, there are factors that can be used to help the teacher to judge the reading texts as stated in http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/reading/developread.htm. They are a) the way how the information is organized, b) students’ familiarity to the topic, c) the length of the text and the message in the text, and d) visual supports possessed by the text to aid in reading comprehension.
In line with the idea above, McWhorter (1992: 5) provides a few important characteristics to consider in selecting a text in order to make the students easy to comprehend the text given. They are the format, graphic and visual materials, typographical aids, language features, subject matter, length, and organization. It will be easy to read a text in which the ideas are broken up by headings, spacing, and listing and supported by maps, pictures graphs, and charts. Headings can be regarded as clues to aid the learners in organizing their thinking about information that will occur (Reiss, 2005: 42).
When a text discusses one new idea and about everyday topic using short sentences or paragraph it will also be easy to understand. Short essay is easier to comprehend than the long one. Furthermore, some materials progress in an orderly, logical fashion from point to point. As the general rule, the less clearly organized written material is, the more difficult it is to read.
Even though teacher has to provide easy materials, it does not mean that reading materials that students read have to be funny or incredibly inventive but the students should at least want to see the information. Krashen (1989: 19) asserts that interesting and comprehensible texts need not be grammatical sequenced, they need only capture students’ attention and be comprehensible. It means if the students are interested to read the text, the teachers can help them to understand the text by providing them tasks that guide them to comprehend the text. Spratt (1985: 65) argues that many newspaper articles, brochures, leaflets, passages from magazines or books etc. are written in simple (not simplified) language, and many of those texts which do contain more complex language can be made accessible to elementary students by being accompanied by easy tasks. Moreover, Fillmore (2005: 72) states that many educators associate simple, short sentences with ease in understanding and interpretation. For that reason, texts that are prepared and selected for English language learners and other students who have trouble reading are often composed of short, choppy sentences. Sasson (2007: 2) suggests that five relatively short mini texts might be better than one infinitely long text.
Syntactic constructions in a text also affect students’ comprehension. If the new structures have been taught, teacher can instruct students to apply their reading strategies to find what they do not know well and what syntactic
constructions are new or difficult for them. That is why the teachers are allowed to review some related structures before presenting the text to the students and introduce some reading strategies that ca help students to understand the text.
In addition, Tronbacke (1996) explains texts that are easy to read and easy to understand not only because difficult words are avoided, but also because the presentation is made specific and easy to follow. He proposes some guidelines that can be used to judge the easiness of the text. The text can be said easy when:
1. it is written concretely. It avoids abstractions and transferred concepts.
2. it is logical. The action should follow a common thread with logical continuity.
3. it involves action that should be direct and simple, without long introductions and without too many characters involved.
4. it avoids symbolical language (metaphors) that may be misunderstood by the reader.
5. it is concise. It does not place several actions in a single sentence. It places the words of the same phrase on the same line.
6. it avoids difficult words but attempts to use a language that is adult and dignified. It uses context clues to explain unusual words.
When the texts are well organized, reading process will become easier and more efficient since different parts of the text have different functions. Day (1994:
22) explains that organization refers to rhetorical of the text and the clarity of the organizations. Students can be guided to see the way the texts are organized in order that they can build comprehension.
Reading materials in various topics should be provided in order to maintain students’ interest and motivation. Day (1994: 22) recommends the teachers to explore three or four themes or topics during the reading course as an aid in facilitating reading comprehension and building background knowledge.
Even though politic will be an interesting topic for students in senior high school, teachers should consider the political suitability of the texts since it may be sensitive to be discussed with the students and teachers are required to have so broad knowledge that they can lead the discussion.
Furthermore cultural suitability is another factor to consider in selecting reading materials for students. The cultural information included in the English textbooks should be correct and recent. It should not make the students misunderstood about the culture and should reflect background cultures of English. It should include visual aids etc., to help students understand cultural information (Kitao and S.Kathleen, 1997: 3)
At last the appearance of the text can be one of factors involved in evaluating text in order to get the appropriate one for the students. Teachers should examine the text to see whether the layout is harmful or beneficial (Day, 1994: 23).
Pictures or other non-textual information might help students in understanding the text. Tronbacke (1996: 4) states that a picture can say more than a thousand words.
A picture which concretely depicts in the text improves understanding and clarifies the message of the text. It must be printed closely to the text and directly related to the content to help the students understand the text. So, it will be attractive and functional.
From all of the factors involved in selecting the texts discussed above, the writer concludes that the teachers should be able to select factors as the basic to judge the texts in order to get the appropriate texts for their classes. Reading comprehension is affected by factors related to the students, curriculum implemented, and the text itself. These factors should be positioned integrally
rather than discretely. To see the quality of the text it is needed some criteria and indicators so that the judgment towards the text can be achieved more accurately.
Factors related to students’ interest and background knowledge must be taken into consideration since these factors give contribution in understanding the texts. It is a challenging for a teacher to find reading materials which can fulfill these factors since they have different background knowledge and interest.
Besides, in modeling of the text, teachers usually present one text. So, in this research, the writer will include these factors as the basic to judge the text used in modeling of text, written cycle.
Readability of the texts can be measured by considering factors related to lexical knowledge, syntactic appropriateness, organization, discourse phenomena and the length of the text. Thus, these factors will also be included in analyzing the texts used in English textbooks for senior high school students.
Since providing more than one topic in reading activity can maintain students’ motivation in reading, topic must be taken into consideration. But, teachers should aware with the topic related to politic. Teachers should have broad knowledge when they are interested in discussing texts related to politic.
Cultural suitability will be another factor in judging the text since in modeling the text, especially for written cycle the teachers are demanded to discuss cultural aspect of the text. Teachers should have sufficient knowledge about English culture.
At last, the text will be judged based on its appearance in the term of layout, font and other non-textual information that can help students to understand the text.
The text can be categorized as a good reading material when it fulfills the criteria required in School Based Curriculum such as the appropriateness of genre with what is required for grade X (Recount, Narrative, Procedure, Descriptive, and News item texts), purpose or social function of the text, generic structure of the text, and grammatical features used. Besides, it fulfills the criteria involved in good text. They are interest, exploitability, readability, topic discussed, cultural suitability, and appearance.