THE EFFECT OF TEXTBOOK READABILITY ON STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION

Language learners should learn reading skill as one of four language skills. It is to make learners' ability on foreign language becomes more comprehensive. The purpose of reading is to improve the understanding about the content of the text and it is the central purpose of language learners. Text readability level is also influenced by the readers’ motivation, ability, and interest. Thats whay in selecting reading texts, the teacher should concern to text readability level and the student language level. Students' level must be related with text readability level, so that it is inappropriate to give junior high school students difficult text such as a difficult scientific text. Therefore this study conclude that the is an effect of textbook readability on students reading comprehension.


Introduction
Reading is one of ways to improve language ability because language learners can learn another language skill through reading texts which will improve language learners' ability. As noted in Jack C. Richards and Renandya (2002:273) that good reading texts can enhance writing skill, speaking and studying language such as vocabularies, grammar and idiom.
Language learners improve their writing skill by summarizing the reading texts in their way, stimulating discussion of the topic on the given texts for speaking skill and studying vocabularies, grammar and idiom. So that reading cannot be neglected by foreign language learners and they must be able to interact foreign language text.
In academical setting, reading materials are provided by language teachers through textbook and it is widely used in language teaching program. Because of its usage in language teaching program, it must cover all four language skills. Relating to reading, textbook can be a basic media for course on reading skill in which it provides a set of reading texts and exercises dealing with the reading texts. However, In order to teach reading in foreign language effectively, the teacher must select the texts which are appropriate for the students' language level.
The level of text will be used differently for different student's language level. In a view of Miller as adapted by Payani, Diem and Purnomo (2003:54) that there are seven levels of texts. They are very difficult, fairly difficult, difficult, standard, fairly easy, easy and very easy level. Very difficult text level is appropriate for college student, difficult level is recommended for high school student and fairly difficult level can be given to some high school student. Whereas standard level can be given to seventh or eighth grade students, fairly easy to the sixth grade student, easy level to the fifth grade student and very easy level to the fourth grade student. As description above, the level of text relates to the students language level. Aslanian, in David Nunan (1991:69)

Text Types in English
Text is the number of words are put together which is built on the number sentences to communicate a meaning, Mark Anderson (1997:1). In creating the text, the author should concern to the diction. It is because words selection depends much on the context and purpose of text. Medical text will contain technical terms for medical world. It is in order to reading the text repeatedly will increase comprehension and rate. The more readers read, the more they will comprehend reading text. When the readers read repeatedly, they will easily comprehend the text since they are already familiar with the text. Good readers will have different reading rate when they read texts on different topic.

It depends on the readers' need in
reading a text. A reader who wants to get general information of text will read the text quickly. However, a reader who wants to get specific information of text will read the text slowly and rather silently.
There are some factors that influence reading rate, four of them are,