Nature of UN THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

B. Element of Comprehension

Comprehending reading text will make us connected with term readability of written materials. As comprehension has a strong correlation with texts’ content, diction, coherence, and so on. As reading is an active activity between the author and the reader. In reading activity, the reader will try to understand what is in the written material made by the writer or the author. 8 We can say that in reading there are two elements, those are: - Reader, as the one who convey meaning from a written material. - Written material, as the media uses by the writer to express his or her idea. In this case, the readability will become an important part, because the readability level will affect the quality of written materials. Simply we could say that readability of a text is one of the factors that determine whether a text is good or not. Some experts try to define what readability is. Nuttall explained that readability is a combination of difficulty level of structural and lexical, such as vocabulary. 9 Dalle and Chall explain readability as how the elements of written material affect the level of success of the readers. In this term the level of success of the readers can be seen by the level of understanding of the material, the reading speed level, and the level of interesting. 10 From the definition above, we can say readability affects three elements in reading activity. Those elements are: - Reading understanding - Reading speed 8 Deborah Daiek and Nancy Anter, Critical Reading for College and Beyond, New York: McGraw-Hill, p.5. 9 Christine Nuttall, Teaching Reading Skill in a Foreign Language, Oxford: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., p. 25. 10 William H Dubay, The Principle of Readability, Long Beach: Impact Information, 2004, p. 3. - The level of readers’ interest I n line with Dalle’s definition, is what explained by Ahmad Slamet in his book Evaluasi Keterbacaan Buku Teks Bahasa Sunda untuk Sekolah Dasar di Jawa Barat. He defines readability into three: a. Hand-writing b. The level of easiness of reading which is based on the content of the text. c. The level of easiness of reading materials which is based on the language’s understandable level 11 Summing up all definitions above, the researcher says that readability is one of the elements of a printed material that make it understandable, less confusing, and more interesting. Based on all of the definitions then we can say we cannot leave the readability in creating a reading text. As the impact of the importance of readability, experts try to create a good standard to determine the level of readability in a text. Wallace in her book explains that the difficulty level of readability of a text can be seen from the function of the word and the sentence length, rather the content of the text. 12 In line with Gillet ’s description about readability level, Fairbairn and Winch say in Reading, Writing and Reasoning: A Guide for Students that there are several elements that need to be seen in order to know whether a text is good or not, those are: - The familiarity of the word - The commonness of the word - The appropriate level of the word - Number of the word - The similarity between words 13 11 Ahmad Slamet Hardjasujana et al. Evaluasi Keterbacaan Buku Teks Bahasa Sunda untuk Sekolah Dasar di Jawa Barat, Jakarta: Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa, 1999, p. 10. 12 Jean Wallace Gillet et al. Understanding Reading Problems, Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2012, p. 241. With all standards that have been made by the experts then comes a question about how to give a clear and acceptable formula. In term of readability there are several formulas that can be used, but generally all the formula is created based on the calculation of the text feature and text difficulty. Chall and Dale say in their book, “A readability formula is an equation which combines those text feature that best predict text difficulty. The equation is usually developed by studying the relationship between text features e.g., words, sentences and text difficulty e.g., reading comprehension, reading rate, expert judgment of difficulty. ” 14 There are several formulas that can be used to calculate the readability level, such as: Fry test, Cloze Procedure, Flesch-Kinclaid, and Flesch Reading Ease. From all the formulas that have been created to count the level of readability Flesch’s Reading Ease formula becomes one of the most used formula among others and also believed as the most tested and reliable formula. 15 Flesch’s Reading Ease formula can calculated manually uses the formula below: Score= 206.853-1.015 X ASL – 84.6 X ASW Description: ASL = Average Sentence Length ASW = Average number of Syllables per Words It also can automatically be counted by Ms. Word 2007or above. As the formulating system has been integrated with Ms. Word 2007 and above. All of the results then need to be matched with their level, whether it is very difficult or very easy. Based on the Flesch’s calculation the level is divided into seven level from very difficult level with readability score zero to thirty until the very easy level with 13 Garvin J Fairbairn and Christopher Winch. Reading, Writing and Reasoning: A Guide for Students, Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press, 1991, p. 84. 14 Jeanne S. Chall and Edgar Dale, Readability Revisited, Massachusetts: Brookline Books, 1995, p. 79. 15 William, Op. Cit., p. 21. readability score ninety until one hundred. The level of the readability is shown in the table below. Table 2.1 Reading Ease Score Level 16 Reading Ease Score Style Description 0 to 30 Very Difficult 30 to 50 Difficult 50 to 60 Fairly Difficult 60 to 70 Standard 70 to 80 Fairly Easy 80 to 90 Easy 90 to 100 Very Easy The Table 2.1 shows the range of score. In this case, the lower the score the harder the level of the readability of texts will be. Contrary with that, if the score of the text is high then it means the level of the readability is easier. One thing needs to be noted from the table 2.1 is the meaning of difficult. The table 2.1 shows the level of readability based on the Flesch-Reading Ease formula, therefore the data above shows the readability from the text perspective. As Flesch- Reading Ease formula focusing on the text condition rather than the readers’ condition. Therefore what is meant as difficult is the condition of sentences in the text, that contains more words, and the words use in the text that contain more syllables. 16 Rudolf Flesch, The Art of Readable Writing, New York: Haddon Craftsman, p. 149. The Flesch, as the founder of Flesch-Reading Ease formula, also provided the level of reading grade based on the reading ease score. The data shows in the Table 2.2 below. Table 2.2 Reading Ease Score-Grade 17 Reading Ease Score Estimated Reading Grade 0 to 30 College Graduate 30 to 50 13 th to 16 th Grade 50 to 60 10 th to 12 th Grade 60 to 70 8 th to 9 th Grade 70 to 80 7 th Grade 80 to 90 6 th Grade 90 to 100 5 th Grade United States of America people’s level in 1949

C. Definition of Texts

In reading activity, text is playing an important role. The reason of why text is important in reading activity, because text as one of the written materials is becoming the media of a writer to explain their idea. As stated by Daiek that two elements in reading activity is the reader and the written materials. 18 Text, as one of the important parts in reading activity, has been defined by lot of experts. Literally based on Dictionary of Language Testing text is defined as 17 Ibid. 18 Daiek. Loc. Cit.