Text readability and grade propriety an analysis of Senior High School English textbooks in Ghana

Abstract

This study sought to examine the suitability of texts in Ghanaian Senior High School English textbooks to their intended students. The purpose is to determine the readability levels of English textbooks as well as the relationship between Lexical Density (LD) and readability, the inter-grade readability variation of texts, their suitability to intended academic levels, the extent of agreeability of readability metrics in their application to same texts as well as the reconcilability of metric and grader readability assessment of same texts. The textual data was culled from the Global Series English textbook series used in Ghanaian Senior High Schools for the teaching of the English language. Applying the mixed methods research, primary data was also collected from a total of 150 graders across the 3 grades of SHS in Ghana. Using a descriptive research design, within the constructivist research paradigm, the study revealed that there is gross arbitrary appropriation of texts in Ghanaian English textbooks to the intended learners as the readability levels of the sampled texts were found to be far above the intended grades of the students. Although the study is focused on senior high school, most of the texts (76%) were found to have readability levels suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate learners as they recorded very high (unreadable according to Flesch’s translated index) readability values. Only two percent (2%) of the texts were found to be suitable for their intended grades at the senior high school. Grader readability assessment of texts was found to be at variance with metric readability assessment. Whilst most graders found most texts to be readable (over 96%), metric readability assessment found same texts to be unreadable (about 98%). The inter-grade readability variation was also found to be very high whilst the readability metrics applied to the texts fairly agreed, with the exception of the Gunning Fog Index (GFI). Some findings of this study are consistent with those of Bani-Amer (2021) and Abuquba et al (2022). The study concludes that readability tests should be conducted on texts in English textbooks before assigning them to students of various grades at the senior high school level in Ghana. It emphasizes the need for the comparative application of readability metrics to texts rather than using one metric. Also, both metric and grader readability assessments need to be conducted on same texts in order to conclude properly on their realistic readability status before assigning them to respective grades. This is as a result of the wide departure between the Gunning readability metric and the three other metrics used in this study, as well as the wide metric-grader readability assessment disparity.