Readability analysis of the 11th and 12th grade earth science textbooks used in the public schools in Saudi Arabia

The concept of readability has been given great attention in the past 50 years. The notion that textbook reading difficulty needs to be matched with student reading ability has been emphasized by readability investigators. Authorities in the field have ascertained that science textbooks are often too difficult for students to read. The literature has also indicated that science textbooks present unique problems to readability. As a measure of reading difficulty the cloze procedure has gained prominence in the readability research. The cloze test has been used extensively in the United States and to a moderate degree in other countries to determine students' comprehension of textbooks. The purpose of this study was threefold; first, to determine the precentage of students in grades 11 and 12 who demonstrate reading ability at the independent, instructional, and frustrational levels of reading in the public secondary schools in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with regard to earth science textbooks; second, to establish cloze score intervals which are representative of independent, instructional, and frustrational student reading levels; and third, to determine if the cloze test can be used to evaluate reading comprehension in the Arabic language. The target population was all of the 3,814 eleventh and twelfth grade male students enrolled in the science division of the public secondary schools in the city of Riyadh. The sample was drawn from six high schools in the Riyadh district. It consisted of 157 eleventh and 152 twelfth grade students. The instruments used in this investigation were a multiple-choice comprehension test and the cloze test. The comprehension test was used to measure the students' reading comprehension and to determine the percentage of students whose reading abilities were at the independent, instructional, and frustrational reading levels. The cloze test was used to establish the corresponding cloze test intervals that relate to the three reading levels established by the reading comprehension test scores and to determine if the cloze test can be used to measure reading comprehension of earth science textbooks in the Arabic language. Multiple-choice and cloze tests were constructed from the same reading passages selected from the eleventh and twelfth grade Earth Science textbooks. The testing period was spread over fourteen consecutive school days. The cloze test was administered during the first six days and the comprehension test was administered during the following eight days. Subjects' scores from each test were tabulated and analyzed. The intraclass (KR20) reliability coefficient was used to evaluate the data and to determine the reliability of each test. The Pearson product moment correlation was utilized to determine the relationship between the comprehension and cloze tests. An ANOVA was used to determine if significant differences existed between the group means on the cloze test for students who were classified as independent, instructional, and frustrational level readers. The computed intraclass reliability coefficients for the comprehension multiple-choice tests for both the 11th and 12th grade were .74 and .73 respectively indicating that the tests are reliable. The comprehension test results indicated that four percent of the eleventh grade earth science students tested were able to score at the independent reading level, forty-three percent at the instructional, and fifty-one percent at the frustrational reading level. Thirty-three percent of the twelfth graders tested demonstrated a reading ability at the instructional level and sixty-one percent at the frustrational reading level. Analysis of variance results showed that the group means on the cloze tests of subjects at each reading level differed significantly (P <.001). The calculated correlation coefficient between the comprehension and cloze test scores for the eleventh grade was .74 and for the twelfth grade was .77 indicating a significant relationship exists between the two tests at each grade. A small percentage of the eleventh grade students comprehend their assigned earth science textbook well. A modest percentage of the eleventh and twelfth graders are able to read the textbooks but they need additional instruction. The majority of them seem to be encountering reading difficulty and need additional reading instruction in order to learn the material presented in their earth science textbooks. The cloze test appears to be an appropriate testing procedure for measuring students' reading comprehension of earth science textbooks in the Arabic language.