SMOG (Simple Measure of Goobledygook) Readibility Index in Selecting Reading Materials and Reading Literacy Skills of Primary School Student

Abstract

Reading materials for elementary school students generally do not have readability in accordance with the measurement results so that the literacy level of students is low, as shown by the survey results from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization which noted that the literacy level of Indonesian society was only 0.001 percent. Therefore, it is necessary to measure readability so that the material in books used in learning is in accordance with the age level of readers and can be understood by students. With these conditions, this study aims to overcome the problem of reading materials in elementary schools that are not in accordance with their readability so that they do not support efforts to develop reading literacy. Reading materials in elementary schools need to be measured through a readability measurement in order to know the suitability of readability with the age of the reader. One of the formulas that can be used to measure readability is the SMOG formula (Simple Measure of Goobledygook), this formula is simpler because it does not use graphs only considers the number of sentences and difficult words. This research uses quantitative methods in the process of measuring and collecting data. The research instruments used text readability measurement, text comprehension instrument questionnaire, literacy measurement and student reading habit questionnaire. Based on the results of the linear regression test, there is a relationship between the results of the readability measurement and the results of the student comprehension measurement of 0.688. The positive correlation shows that the higher the score value of the readability measurement results, the lower the students' understanding of the reading. The results show that reading books used in elementary schools have a high readability index value, so that it can reduce students' understanding of reading materials used in learning.