Textbook Assessment: Matching the Reader with the Reading Text

Abstract

The study assessed the readability level of commonly used primary six English textbook. It matched the reader with the reading text to see if the textbook is within the ability of the reader to read it successfully. The method used for the readability assessment is the cloze procedure. Three passages were chosen from the beginning, middle and end of the book under study. A close test was constructed with three passages from the English textbook. The first sentence of each of the passages is left intact while the deletion of every 7th word starts with the second sentence of each passage. Two primary schools at Ibadan were used as subjects for the study and 100 primary six pupils were used as subjects for the study. Independent t-Test was used to compute the scores. The result shows that class placement of pupils did not agree with the readability level of their English textbook. Greater number of primary six pupils read their English textbook at frustration level. A few pupils read their textbook at instructional and independent reading competence level. The study also shows that sex did not influence pupils’ readability of their textbook. Item analysis of all the questions was done to determine the discriminating power and the difficulty level of the whole questions. Most of the items discriminated sharply between the good and poor pupils while some items did not discriminate at all. The English text passages were difficult for the entire primary six pupils.