Table 3.2 Reading Ease Scale of the Flesch Formula
3
Score Difficult Level
Reading Grade
0 to 30 Very Difficult
College graduate 30 to 50
Difficult 13
th
to 16
th
grade college 50 to 60
Fairly Difficult 10
th
to 12
th
grade 60 to 70
Standard 8
th
and 9
th
grade 70 to 80
Fairly Easy 7
th
grade 80 to 90
Easy 6
th
grade 90 to 100
Very Easy 5
th
grade
The writer finds difficulty in converting the reading grade of american standard into Indonesian standard because there are not previous studies or
reliable references which use conversion of reading grade. Therefore, the writer assumes that the reading grade of Flesch Reading Ease formula is similar to
Indonesian school grade. It means that the 5
th
grade is equal to 5
th
grade students of Elementary school. 6
th
grade is equal to 6
th
grade students of Elementary school. 7
th
grade is equal to 7
th
grade of Junior High School. 8
th
and 9
th
grade is equal to 8
th
– 9
th
grade of Junior High School. 10
th
to 12
th
grade is equal to 10
th
– 12
th
grade of Senior High School. 13
th
to 16
th
grade is equal to university students from 1
st
semester until 8
th
semester. College graduate is equal to graduated university students.
3
William H. Dubay, The Principles of Readability, Costa Mesa: Impact Information, 2004, p. 22.
34
CHAPTER IV FINDING AND INTERPRETATION
A. Finding
1. Textbook Description
The writer annalized an English textbook entitled Advanced Learning English 2 that is published by Grafindo Media Pratama in 2012. This textbook
is compiled by Herman Benyamin. This textbook is dedicated for the eleventh grade students of Senior High Schools which is developed based on KTSP
Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan. Moreover, in order to facilitate the process of teaching and learning English,
the eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 4 Tangerang Selatan are recommended to use this textbook.
The textbook consists of 258 pages and 6 units. Each unit is presented in four-skill sections Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. Furthermore,
this textbook also takes a concern in grammar and pronunciation. The whole units have a topic based on the genre of the text such as descriptive, narrative,
hortatory exposition and spoof. For the reading sections, there are 3 descriptive texts, 8 narrative texts, 2 analytical exposition texts, 1 hortatory
exposition text and 3 spoof texts. The writer took all reading texts in reading sections.
2. Data Description
The writer uses Flesch Reading Ease Formula to find out the readability level of the reading texts on the textbook Advanced Learning English 2,
The readability score is gotten by counting the syllables, words, and sentences of a
text by calculating it in countwordsworth.com.
The calculation result of the sentences, words, and syllables of each text is presented in table 4.1:
Table 4.1 The Description of Sentence, Word, and Syllable Calculations of Reading Texts
Text Number of
sentences Number of
Words Number of
Syllables
Text 1 22
283 433
Text 2 20
277 441
Text 3 20
215 348
Text 4 29
264 355
Text 5 30
271 352
Text 6 33
310 418
Text 7 14
217 349
Text 8 13
194 311
Text 9 11
140 178
Text 10 9
140 220
Text 11 8
120 167
Text 12 24
362 571
Text 13 23
310 408
Text 14 27
376 529
Text 15 12
171 239
Text 16 16
193 283
Text 17 14
280 479
