The Reading Task Quality in a Textbook Entitled Bahasa Inggris for Grade X of Senior High School Based on the Cognitive Analysis of Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy

Abstract

Textbook is one of source materials used by teachers in teaching and learning process and it is divided into 2 kinds namely students’ book and teachers’ book. In order to make the materials in a textbook well received by the students, the teachers have to consider about the quality of the textbook. They can measure the textbook’s quality by analyzing the content using a certain criteria. There are some theories usually used in analyzing textbooks quality, one of them is Bloom’s Taxonomy. Bloom’s taxonomy was created by Benjamin Bloom in 1956 and revised by his students, Anderson and Krathwol in 2001. Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy has three domains; cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. Cognitive domain involves knowledge and development of intellectual abilities and skill. There are six levels in cognitive domain which are “Remembering”, “Understanding”, “Applying”, “Analyzing”, “Evaluating”, and “Creating”. The six levels are classified into two thinking levels; Lower Order Thinking Skills containing Understanding, Remembering, and Applying and Higher Order Thinking Skill comprising Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating. Besides, the content of the textbook can also be measured by using the learning target stated in the curriculum documented clearly on the syllabus. The learning target of curriculum 2013 only consists of “Remembering”, “Understanding”, “Applying”, and “Analyzing” levels. This research was document analysis in which the researcher used reading tasks of a textbook entitled “Bahasa Inggris” published by Ministry of Education and Culture (Kemendikbud) as the research data. Then, the data were classified by using cogitive domains of Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy. After classifying the data, the researcher calculated the percentage of all domains and ranked them. Finally, the resercher related the result of the analysis with the learning target of curriculum 2013. Besed on the analysis result, there are some points found. The first point is all cognitive domains were applied in the reading tasks. The second point is the reading tasks of the textbook were dominated by Lower Order Thinking Skill (LOTS) categories which consisted of “Remembering”, “Understanding”, and “Applying” levels. The number of those categories occupied about 80% of the whole reading tasks. The last point is the reading tasks of the textbook have followed the learning target of curriculum 2013. It was proved by about 90% of the reading tasks belong to “Remembering”, “Understanding”, “Applying”, and “Analyzing” levels. Those levels are implicitly stated in the syllabus of the curriculum. From this research, it can be concluded that the reading tasks of the textbook provides more Lower Order Thinking Skill (LOTS) levels. However, it has been appropriate for the learning target of curriculum 2013 because most of the tasks have fulfilled the criteria stated implicitly in the syllabus. It is suggested to the teachers to introduce a term of Higher Order Thinking Skill (HOTS) as the students’ enrichment and it can also use to increase students’ critical thinking ability.