Reading Tasks in Seventh Grade Junior High School English Coursebook: Genre Based Evaluation

Abstract

Coursebooks as one of the learning sources are important to meet the students’ needs, especially those that match with the current curriculum. The current curriculum in Indonesia is Merdeka Curriculum. Therefore, the value of Genre Based Approach (GBA) in the Merdeka curriculum in a 7th grade Junior High School English coursebook is examined. An adopted checklist consists of 25 items focused on the subjects and contents, skill and sub-skills, and practical consideration is used as the evaluation matrix. The result answers three research questions. First, the coursebook shows a variety of activities. The most frequent reading activity is “read and answer questionsâ€. Followed by “read and fill the blanks'' which becomes almost the two fifth part from the whole reading activities. Next, “read descriptive textâ€, “read sentences'', and “read comic strips'' also appear in the coursebook for less than 10%. The other reading activities are “read procedure textâ€, “read and draw mapâ€, and “read a descriptive text and answer a true or false statement†(5.8% for each). Then, the last are “read and underlineâ€, “read and give checklistâ€, and “read and ask someone’s identity†with the smallest portion in the coursebook. Second, the genres that appear in the coursebook are descriptive, procedure, and persuasive text. Last, the result of whether the coursebooks are implementing Genre-based Approach in Merdeka curriculum standards or not, and the result from the first and second research questions show that the coursebook that has been analyzed is implementing Genre-based Approach in Merdeka curriculum standards.