AN EVALUATION OF READING MATERIALS IN ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS FOR THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

Abstract

This study aims to find out whether the reading materials in two different English textbooks have fulfilled the criteria of good reading materials adapted from three ELT scholars: Byrd in Celce-Murcia (2001:

146), Cunningsworth (1995: 15), and Skierso (1991) and in what way they have fulfilled these criteria. This study is content analysis. It applied research procedures of texts evaluation adapted from Harmer (2001) and Ur  (1991).  The  procedures  were  choosing population, selecting sample, selecting areas for evaluation, deciding on criteria, finding indicators of criteria, and applying criteria. The data sources were two English textbooks, namely English in Focus for Grade VIII for Junior High School (SMP/MTs) and The Bridge English Competence 2. The data were 34 texts 20 of which are from Textbook 1 and 14 are from Textbook 2. The data collection techniques were reading and applying the criteria to the characteristics in the texts with coding „1‟  for the fulfilled criteria and „0‟  for the unfulfilled criteria. The data analysis processes were reading texts, matching up the texts with the theories, coding the texts, and presenting the results. This research applied credibility (theory triangulation) and dependability (inter-rater reliability) to check the trustworthiness of the data. The findings showed that descriptives in Textbook 1 were „poor‟ by achieving

49% fulfilment, recounts were „fair‟ by attaining 54% fulfilment, and narratives were „fair‟ by gaining 54% fulfilment. On the other hand, descriptives in Textbook 2 were „good‟ by getting 61% fulfilment, recounts were „fair‟ by reaching 56% fulfilment, and narratives were „good‟ by obtaining 66% fulfilment. In conclusion, the texts in the textbooks were good at the aspect of content, pre and post reading activities, co- text and context but bad at the aspect of content and pre and post reading activities. This implies that not all reading materials in the two textbooks have good quality.

Keywords: content analysis, texts evaluation, descriptives, recounts, narratives, textbooks