Investigating the Difficulty Levels of Reading Questions in the Seventh-Grade Textbook “English for Nusantara”

Abstract

Reading is an important skill in acquiring information (Todorova, 2024; Harmer, 2007) and is a core part of the curriculum. However, the PISA 2018 results show that Indonesian students' reading skills are still low. Textbooks such as English for Nusantara are one of the main learning tools, so the quality of the questions needs to be evaluated. Inappropriate question difficulty levels can hinder student understanding (Grabe & Stoller, 2019). Cognitive level analysis based on the Revised Bloom Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) is important so that reading questions really support the development of students' thinking skills. For instance, previous research by Arlansyah et al. (2023) showed that the reading questions in the textbook was not fully in accordance with the learning outcomes. Therefore, this study was conducted to analyze more deeply the difficulty levels of reading questions in the seventh-grade ‘English for Nusantara’ textbook and filled the gap of previous research that had not focused on analyzing reading questions. Based on the gaps found in previous research, the purpose of this study was to analyze the difficulty levels of reading questions in English textbook based on the cognitive domains of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. This research specifically focused on the classification of reading questions into six cognitive domains: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. The object of this research was the “English for Nusantara” textbook for the Seventh Grade Junior High School which published by the Ministry of Education and Culture in 2023. The textbook consisted of 264 pages with an opening chapter (Chapter 0) and 5 main chapters (Chapter 1-5). The textbook was written by Ika Lestari Damayanti as the main author and several co-authors. This textbook was implemented for education world in Indonesia and presented using English as a Foreign Language (EFL). This study used a qualitative design with Content Analysis Method to identify the difficulty levels of reading questions in the textbook ‘English for Nusantara’ for grade VII of Junior High School based on the Revised Bloom Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Content Analysis Method was chosen because it was able to explore the explicit and the implicit meanings of the material (Ary et al., 2009; Kuckartz & Rädiker, 2023). The reading questions texts were collected through document analysis of 166 reading questions from the Reading and Reading and Viewing sections of the textbook. The data collection procedure was carried out by reading, identifying, documenting, and compiling the questions into an analysis table. Next, the data analysis was conducted through three stages according to Ary et al. (2009): organizing and familiarizing, coding and reducing, and interpreting data to draw meaningful findings. This study analyzed 166 reading questions in the English for Nusantara grade VII Junior High School book based on Anderson & Krathwohl's Revised Bloom Taxonomy (2001). The results showed that the reading questions in the English for Nusantara Grade VII textbook were not fully aligned with the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy framework, as they were dominated by lower-order cognitive domains: Remembering (47%), Understanding (33.8%), and Applying (11.4%). Higher-order domains such as Analyzing (C4) and Evaluating (C5) appeared only minimally, and Creating (C6) was not found at all. This indicates that the textbook questions focused more on basic cognitive processes rather than encouraging students' critical and creative thinking skills. Therefore, as a further improvement, teachers were advised to develop additional questions and activities that challenge higher-order thinking skills, such as analysis tasks, evaluation exercises, and creative projects. In addition, textbook developers were expected to design questions that are m