Developing English Reading Learning Materials for Grade XI Vocational High School Students of Fashion Design Study Program

Abstract

The aims of this study were to: (1) discover the needs of the eleventh grade students of Fashion Design Study Program of vocational high schools, and (2) develop the appropriate reading learning materials for the eleventh grade students of Fashion Design Study Program of vocational high schools. The study was Research and Development (R&D). It was conducted by adapting Jolly and Bolitho’s model in Tomlinson (1998) which consists of needs analysis, materials development, materials evaluation, and revision. The subjects of this research were 27 students of grade XI of Fashion Design study program at one of vocational high school in Yogyakarta. The data were collected by distributing the needs analysis questionnaire and the expert judgment questionnaire. The results of the needs analysis and expert judgment were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The research findings revealed that the students’ target needs were to be able to communicate fluently both spoken and written in English and that their main difficulties in learning English are reading, vocabulary and grammar. They also needed topics and learning input that were in line with their discipline. Then, students preferred tasks in the form of comprehension combined with vocabulary and grammar and then doing tasks in group outside the classroom. The product of this research was three units of reading materials.  Based on the expert judgment, the developed English reading learning materials were considered appropriate. The mean score of the overall aspects is 3.49, which belongs to the “very good” category.

Keywords: materials, reading, Fashion Design Study Program