2. The Methods of Readability Measurement
According to Smith, there are three ways in assessing the readability of a text. They are comprehension testing, cloze procedure test, and
statistical readability.
37
a. Comprehension Testing
Comprehension testing is conducted by asking students to do silent reading and ask them questions about the author‟s message in the text.
The text is said to be readable when students understand it about 70 to 80.
38
In addition, Harjasujana et.al. state that a reading text is easy to read when readers understand 98 of the vocabularies used in the
text and master 75 of the content.
39
b. Cloze Procedure Test
Cloze Procedure Test was introduced by Wilson Taylor in 1953. He used
this test to measure students‟ individual understanding of texts.
40
Originally, this Cloze Procedure Test was intended to measure texts‟ reading difficulty level. This test was created to determine if a
text is suitable for a group of students or not.
41
Hence, to measure reading difficulty level of a text by using Cloze Procedure Test is to
measure students‟ understanding of the text.
Cloze Procedure Test, according to Alderson, is typically constructed by deleting every n-th word. The n-th word is said to be
the words between every 5
th
and 12
th
. Cloze procedure test requires students to restore the deleted words. To help students understand the
37
Nila B. Smith and Alan R., Reading Instruction for Today’s Children, New York:
Prentice Hall Inc,, 1980, p. 115-116.
38
Ibid.
39
Ahmad Slamet Harjasujana et.al., Evaluasi Keterbacaan Buku Teks Bahasa Sunda untuk Sekolah di Jawa Barat, Jakarta: Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa, 1999, p.
11.
40
DuBay, op. cit., p. 27.
41
J. B. Heaton, Writing English Language Test, New York: Longman Inc., 1988, p. 131.
text, one or two sentences of the beginning and end of the text are usually left intact.
42
Furthermore, Nuttal states that Cloze Procedure Test is an indicator of readability. It is a technique that involves the deletion of words in a
text. The deleted words are between every 5
th
and 10
th
word.
43
The cloze procedure test is used to assess the readability of a text in which
teachers give students a text that is deleted its some words and ask them to fill the deleted words. The deletion of word is done
systematically by the teachers.
44
If the teacher deletes the 8
th
word of a sentence, then shehe has to delete the 8
th
word of the next sentence. Additionally, according to Heaton, the most favoured deletion words
are the fifth, sixth, and seventh.
45
After distributing the test to students, teachers have to correct the students‟ answer and find out the percentage. To find out the
percentage of the Cloze Procedure Test, Anas Sudjiono had formulated a formula as follows:
x 100
p = percentage f = frequency of the right answer
N = number of item.
46
Furthermore, after finding the percentage of the Cloze Procedure Test, teachers try to find out the cloze score. Heaton classifies the
cloze score level as below:
If the mean score of the group is over 53 percent, the material can be used by the students for reading at „the independent level‟, the
text being considered easy enough for students to read on their own without any help. If the mean score obtained is between 44
42
J. Charles Alderson, Assessing Reading, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 207.
43
Nuttal, op. cit., p. 28.
44
Heaton, op. cit., p. 131-132.
45
Ibid., p. 131.
46
Anas Sudjiono, Pengantar Statistik Pendidikan, Jakarta: PT. Raja Grafindo Persada, 2007, p. 43.
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