TEXT READABILITY AND SYNTACTIC COMPLEXITY IN THE READING TEXTS OF INDONESIAN SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS

Choosing a proper textbook for student is hard, not only for the teacher, but also for syllabus designer. Textbooks must be carefully selected so it does not mismatch with the student reading level. Since choosing a proper textbook for students is important, study which evaluate the textbooks are needed. Therefore, this study aims to measure the text readability and syntactic complexity of English textbook in senior high school level to draw the current distribution of text readability and syntactic complexity. The data was obtained from English textbooks provided by Ministry of Education and Culture. The books have implemented the newest curriculum which is 2013 curriculum. The data are taken only from the reading texts of each textbook. The number of reading texts contained in each textbook is varied from 11 reading texts, 15 reading texts, and 18 reading texts. Those texts are then analyzed from its text readability and syntactic complexity. In terms of text readability, this study used automatic text readability formula, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL) to measure the level of texts based on the grade level. For the syntactic complexity, this study used syntactic complexity analyzer (SCA). The result shows that textbook grade level and text readability shows significant relation. In addition, the relation between textbook grade level and syntactic complexity is also significant. Moreover, the relation between text readability and syntactic complexity is also significant. This study also finds that the distribution of text readability and syntactic complexity is not appropriate because reading texts in grade 10 overall is harder than in grade 11. As academic English, it is common to give the texts that the sophistication is increased from grade to grade. Based in the result, the textbooks need to be evaluated and revised especially in text readability and syntactic complexity