THE READABILITY LEVEL OF READING TEXTS IN ENGLISH TEXTBOOK ENTITLED FORWARD AN ENGLISH (Course For Vocational School Student’s Grade XI)

ABSTRACT Setioningrum, Zuliana. Student Registered Number 12510184035. 2021. The Readability Level of Reading Texts in English Textbook Entitled “Forward an English (Course for Vocational School Student’s Grade XI)”. Thesis. English Education Department. Faculty of Tarbiyah and Teacher Training. State Islamic Institute (IAIN) of Tulungagung. The 1st Advisor: Dr. Dwi Astuti Wahyu N, SS, M.Pd and The 2nd Advisor Dr. Arina Shofiya, M.Pd. Keywords: Reading Text, Textbook, Readability Level Textbook is one of the instructional media that is used as the paramater of teaching and learning process. Textbook is crucial teaching learning material composed of text or images that is used in many school and facilitating sequences of learning activities. Therefore, analying the quality of textbook is needed. The objective of this study was to find out the readability level of the reading text in the English textbook entitled “Forward an English (Course for Vocational School Student’s Grade XI)”. This study employed descriptive quantitative as the research design. Flesch Reading Ease Scale formula and Flesch Kincaid Grade Level formula were used as the instruments of this study to measure the readability level of reading text in the textbook. There are 13 units of the reading texts of this study, they are the whole reading texts in the textbook on the textbook Forward an English (Course for Vocational School Student’s Grade XI). The result of this reasearch based on Flesch Ease Scale Formula shows that there were seven reading texts (54%) in a range score 60 – 70 classified into “Standard” reading level, three reading texts (23%) in a range 50 – 60 classified into “Fairly difficult” reading level, one reading text (8%) in a range 30 – 50 classified into “Difficult” reading level, and two reading texts (15%) in a range 0 – 30 classified into “Very difficult” reading level. In another word, it can be said that that there are many texts are too easy for Vocational school in a grade XI. Besides, the readability level of reading text by using Flesch Kincaid Grade formula shows that there were seven text (54%) have low readability level, two texts (15%) have high readability for the Vocational School in a grade XI and there were four reading text (31%) are suitable for Vocational School in a grade XI. Based on the two formulas used, it shows similar results of the reading texts readability. In other words, the range of the difference is not too far. If it is a bit different, it is caused by the different standards or criteria used in both formulas. The reading materials of this textbook are easy but less challenging in term of the structure and vocabularies used in the texts and the texts are not appropriate for them for the XI grade students in term of the content that discussed in the texts. On the other hand, there are also about two reading texts which are too high and becomes too difficult for the students to understand in term of the material, vocabulary, and structure used. However, there are three upto four reading texts that belong to suitable texts for the eleventh graders of Vocational School because of its content, vocabularies, and structures are not too difficult or too easy for them