A Comparison of Reading Levels of High School and Freshmen University Students in Jordan

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze the readability, appropriateness and difficulty level of the reading texts in Action Pack 11 (hereafter AP11) which is taught for grade 11, Action Pack 12 (hereafter AP 12) that is taught for grade 12 at the schools of The Jordanian Ministry of Education and New Headway Plus Pre-intermediate (hereafter NHWP) that is taught for an introductory English language course in the Jordanian Universities. The sample of the study involved 274 eleventh grade students, 300 twelfth grade students, and 310 freshmen students who were studying CL 099 at Yarmouk University in the academic year 2011/2012. The study employed Flesch Grade Level and Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease formulas to identify the readability level of each textbook. Furthermore, a sixth- word deletion cloze test version of a representative text from each textbook was used to identify the match between the textbooks and the students. The findings of the study revealed that the secondary school textbooks are on average about three grade levels higher in reading difficulty than the textbook of the university level. Furthermore, the cloze test results showed that the majority of the students studying each textbook were at their frustration reading levels.