The Selection of Texts

George Klare in DuBay defines readability as “the ease of understanding or comprehension due to the style of writing.” This definition is based on writing style out of content, coherence, and organization of the texts. 32 In the same book, Gretcen Hargis et.al. defines readabili ty as the “ease of reading words and sentences.” 33 They also add that readability is an attribute of clarity. Thus, the clarity of words and senetences leads to the ease of the texts. Further, G. Harry McLaughlin points out that readability i s “the degree to which a given class of people find certain reading matter compelling and comprehensible.” 34 When a class of people find a text is comprehensible for them, they have met the text‟s readability that suits their reading level. Edgar Dale and Jeanne Call in DuBay define readability as “the sum total including all the interactions of all those elements within a given piece of printed material that affect the success a group of readers have with it. The success is the extent to which they understand it, read it at an optimal speed, and find it interesting.” 35 We can also say that when students find a text is interesting for them and they are able to read and understand it, then the text is readable for them. In the book Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language, Nuttal defines readability as the combination of structural and lexical difficulty. 36 Thus, the term readability is not only refers to the lexical difficulty of a text but also the structural difficulty. To sum up, readability is a combination of the difficulty in vocabulary and the structure of the text. From various definitions above, it can be concluded that readability is the ease and difficulty level of texts related to students‟ reading ability. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Nuttal, op. cit., p. 25.

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.