Investigating Students' Reasons in Choosing Popular Graded Readers

Abstract

Day and Bamford (1998) believed that Extensive Reading Class is a place to make the foreign language learners enjoy and like reading English materials. However, in Extensive Reading Classes of English Department (ED) Satya Wacana Christian University some students did not enjoy the reading materials, which were graded readers. The problem was it caused them to manipulate the assignment. They listed graded readers that they did not read in their reading list and only asked their friends to retell the stories. It meant the purpose of the class was not fulfilled because they did not enjoy the materials. Thus it is important to solve the problem. This study investigates the students' reasons in choosing popular graded readers which are graded readers that mostly read by students. Using the result, this study tries to minimize the manipulation by making the students interested to read the other unpopular graded readers. The participants are twelve students from six extensive reading classes 2010/2011 who read popular graded readers. Every participant was personally being interviewed using semi structured interview then its transcripts were analyzed using content analysis (McKay, 2006). The dominant reason why the students borrow popular graded readers is because they had watched the movie adapted from those popular graded readers. They also like graded readers that are familiar to them. Thus, to minimize the manipulation done by the students, ED can promote the unpopul