Developing Reading Learning Materials for Grade XI Students of The Patisserie Expertise Program of Vocational High School

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to describe the target and learning needs of Grade XI students of the Patisserie Expertise Program of vocational high schools in terms of the reading teaching and learning context and to develop the appropriate reading learning materials for Grade XI students of the Patisserie Expertise Program of vocational high schools. This was a Research and Development (R&D) study. The subjects of this research were Grade XI students of the Patisserie Expertise Program of SMKN 6 Yoyakarta. The research procedure was adapted from the model of materials development proposed by Jolly and Bolitho in Tomlinson (1998). To collect the data of the research, two types of questionnaires were used as the instruments. The first was the needs analysis questionnaire which was made to obtain the data about the students’ target and learning needs and the second was the expert judgment questionnaire which was made to obtain the data about the appropriateness of the materials developed. The data from the needs analysis and the expert judgment were analyzed quantitatively through descriptive statistics. The results of the needs analysis showed that the target and learning needs of Grade XI students of the Patisserie Expertise Program were as follows. The students wanted to be able to communicate in English fluently and efficiently and increase their English vocabulary mastery. In the future working fields, they would use English to communicate actively in written and oral form. The current students’ reading ability was average. They preferred texts which are related to patisserie as the input. They wanted texts which consist of 151-250 words and are equipped with pictures. They liked to analyze the meanings of particular words based on the context in the texts. They expected that their teacher gives examples before asking them to do tasks. They liked to make some notes from their teacher’s explanation. They preferred to work individually and not always in the classroom. The products of this research were three units or reading materials. Each unit consists of 17 to 19 tasks. The topics were related to the field of patisserie. Based on the results of the expert judgment, the developed materials were considered appropriate and the mean score of all aspects was 3.83, which was very good.