ANALYSIS OF READING EXERCISES FOUND IN THE ENGLISH ON TARGET TEXTBOOK PUBLISHED BY ERLANGGA

Abstract

This research will look at the reading comprehension activities in Erlangga's English on Target textbook for Grade XI Senior High School students. Using a descriptive qualitative approach, the study investigated all reading passages and related exercises from eight chapters to determine the reading comprehension abilities addressed and the sorts of exercises performed. The research reveals that the textbook incorporates six major reading skills: identifying primary concepts, locating specific material, interpreting terminology in context, drawing conclusions, determining authorial purpose, and recognizing text organization. Literal comprehension dominates the early chapters, whereas inferential and evaluative skills become increasingly common in later units, indicating a shift toward higher-order thinking. Five exercise formats were discovered, with multiple-choice questions accounting for the most, followed by vocabulary-based items, true/false and matching tasks, open-ended responses, and reading activities that use grammar. Although the textbook makes an effort to guide students from basic to advanced comprehension, literal questions are more common than analytical ones. These findings suggest that, while the textbook promotes core reading skills, teachers may need to augment it with additional inferential and evaluative tasks to meet curriculum goals related to higher-order literacy. The study admits its constraint of focusing on a particular textbook and suggests future research that includes classroom implementation and comparative studies to improve understanding of textbook effectiveness in Indonesian EFL environments.