DEVELOPING TASK-BASED SUPPLEMENTARY ENGLISH READING MATERIALS FOR THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

Abstract

The objectives of this research were: (1) to find out the the target needs of the eighth grade students regarding reading materials, (2) to find out the learning needs  of  the  students  regarding  with  reading  materials,   (3)  to  develop appropriate supplementary English reading learning materials for the students. This research was a  research  and  development  (R&D) study. It adapted the R&D model proposed by Borg and Gall (2003). The subjects were the eighth grade students of SMP 3 Bantul class 8B. The steps taken included conducting need analysis, designing the course grid, developing the first draft of the materials, performing expert judgement, and writing the final draft of the materials. There were two types of questionnaire used in this research. The first questionnaire was the needs analysis questionnaire. It was distributed to the students to find out their needs and characteristics. The second questionnaire was for the expert judgement. The data obtained from the needs analysis and the expert judgement were analyzed quantitatively through descriptive statistics. The data from the needs analysis were used to design the course grid and to develop the materials, while the data from the expert judgement were used to revise the developed materials. The   results   of   this   research   showed   that   the supplementary  reading materials that the students need are materials which are related to their daily life and contain the language features of the texts, vocabulary and grammar lessons, and interesting reading activities with pictures and colours. The product of this study was a set of task-based supplementary English reading materials for the eighth grade students of junior high school entitled “Reading Adventure”. It consisted of three units. Each unit of the developed materials consisted of 19-20 reading activities. Based on the data from  the  expert  judgment,  the  mean  score  of   all  aspects  of  the three developed units is 3.67. It fells into the range of 3.25 ≤ x ≤ 4. It means that the developed  materials were  categorized  as “Very Good”.  Therefore,  it  can  be concluded that the task-based supplementary English reading materials are appropriate for the eighth grade students of junior high school.

Keywords: reading, supplementary English reading materials, task-based