The Correlation Among Text Readability, Reading Strategy And Reading Comprehension

Abstract

This study explores the correlation between learners' reading comprehension and reading strategies which was carried out with 96 high school tenth graders who took two reading comprehension tests, first of them involving the easier text, and the second one the text difficult to read. Both of them were accompanied by a questionnaire on their reading strategy use. This research adopted a correlational research design which came up with five main results that were also in line with the proposed research questions. First result was focused on the measure level of text readability of Forward an English Course textbook which has 4 levels of readability, they are easy level, fairly easy level, standard / average level and difficult level. Secondly, this study found the most frequently reading strategies used by students in reading comprehension test for easy text is problem solving reading strategies while in reading comprehension test for difficult text, the most frequently reading strategies used by students is support reading strategies. Third, the result of this study revealed that there is negative correlation between text readability and reading comprehension. It is proved by the result of the correlation value that rxy is־0.345. Secondly, there is a positive correlation (rxy = 0.254) between text readability and reading strategy of the tenth graders. Finally, there is also positive correlation (rxy= 0.434) between reading strategy and reading comprehension of the tenth graders. These findings implicated that the teacher should consider the readability level of text used as teaching material which should be suitable with their students‟ level. In addition, the teachers have to familiarize reading strategies to their students so as the students are able to have good reading skill and also the students have to be aware of the use of reading strategies in reading EFL materials. Suggestions proposed on the basis of the result are addressed to English teacher that readability should be regarded as one of the aspects worth considering in selecting and developing materials and led the students to use appropriate reading strategies. For other researchers who intend to pursue related to this topic in future research to conduct different groups of learners in similar situation and context to investigate their perspectives on readability based on the genre of texts.