Developing Critical Literacy-Based Instructional Reading Materials for Teaching EFL Reading Classes

Reading material development becomes one of the challenges in EFL reading class. Most of educators choose to adopt the existing learning materials due to the capacity and time constraints in the material development. This study aims to develop critical literacy-based instructional reading materials used to teach EFL reading classes. This study adopted the research design proposed by Plomp and Nieveen (2010); preliminary phase, prototyping phase


INTRODUCTION
The studies on the development of critical literacy-based teaching materials is still relatively rare, especially in Indonesia.Rohadi (2018) developed critical literacybased reading materials for teaching critical reading.The results of the study show that reading critical literacy-based reading materials was proven to be able to improve the students' critical reading skills in English Language Education Study Program.In addition, Priyatni and Nurhadi (2017) and Mambu (2010) developed a textbook to encourage students various texts using a critical literacy approach.For example, analysing the issue of gender bias in an Indonesian short story entitled Mawar Putih written by Armijn Pane.Reading texts presented in those two textbooks raise students' critical awareness about some social issues such as exploitation, discrimination, and bullying which served in the fiction books.The last text book which guides students to sharpen their critical reading skills was written by Sultan (2018).The book presents various types of texts such as news item texts, editorial texts, advertorial texts, and opinion texts.Unlike the previous two books, the author introduced the characteristics of each text and invited the students to read the texts critically by using critical reading approach.
Reading skills determine a person's career and academic success.Compared to the other language skills, reading skill is the most important language skill which must be acquired by EFL students.As the process of absorbing information occurs when a student carries out reading activities (Harmer, 2010), the more students read, the broader their insight will be.For science students, reading is perceived as the most powerful learning source.To comprehend science and math textbooks, they need satisfactory reading skills.For those reasons, reading skills would affect the students' achievement in science and mathematics (Akbasli, Sahin, & Yaykiran, 2016).Furthermore, teaching reading in Indonesia is divided into two phases; the beginning level and the reading comprehension level (Suryanto, 2017).The beginning level is the first phase in teaching reading.In this phase, the teacher introduces writing letters and English vocabulary.This phase is followed by the reading comprehension level which becomes the highest level of reading skills (Oakhill, Cain, and Elbro, 2015).In this phase, students are able to understand and analyse various types of communication in oral and written form.As a matter of fact, Indonesian students have poor reading literacy skills (Tiarina, Wahyuni, Fitri, Sakinah, and Afif, 2022).It was proven from results of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 which shows that the Indonesian students' reading literacy is ranked 68 th with an average score of 371, it is placed in the 6 th position from the bottom.
Among various advantages of reading skills, teaching reading in Indonesia experiences various challenges and obstacles.Erlina, Astrid, Kurniasari, andPurwansyah (2019) andFebriana, (2021) explained that the low reading interest and reading habits are the major challenges of teaching reading in Indonesian classrooms.This condition results in the low reading literacy of the Indonesian students.In addition, limited infrastructure and reading resources are the other challenges of teaching reading in Indonesia.The government has not provided various sources of reading for students which raise their motivation to read a book.Suryanto (2017) explained that there are three problems in teaching reading in Indonesia.The first problem is a cultural problem, people in Indonesia prefer to talk rather than to read.Consequently, this condition influences their reading interest and reading habits in daily life.The second problem is the teaching and learning process.Indonesian students are passive learners who tend to accept all the information delivered by their teacher without analysing and evaluating the information critically.Also, the students are also lack reading strategies which make them difficult to comprehend a reading text.Yadav (2014) found that the main challenge in teaching reading lies with students and teachers.In teaching reading, the teachers encounter some difficulties to select appropriate reading texts and design reading tasks.During the learning process, the students have low learning motivation since reading is not an interesting activity for them.Guntur and Pordanjani (2019) said that obstacles to teach reading in Indonesia are caused by the absence of critical thinking skills (Velayati, Muslem, Fitriani, and Samad, 2017) which are used to interpret, analyse and evaluate the information presented in a reading text, and also lack linguistic competence (Solikhah, 2018), especially in English vocabulary and grammar mastery which makes them difficult to grasp a reading text.
Developing learning materials for EFL class is always challenging for all educators.Materials are anything, either in the form of textbooks or audio visuals, which are used by teachers to facilitate the learning process (Tomlinson, 2011).Material is not only useful for improving the effectiveness of learning process, Meraji and Zamanian (2014) and Bušljeta (2013) explain that learning material is also functions to enhance students' motivation and critical awareness, to give students the opportunity to obtain long-term learning experiences, to raise students' prior knowledge, encourage student creativity, to develop the process of understanding, organization, synthesizing knowledge, to encourage the mutual interaction between students and teachers and vice versa, and develop various skills, knowledge and attitudes.In this regard, it is not sufficient for educators only understanding the characteristics of the appropriate learning materials.They should have the ability to develop and select learning materials which meet with their students' learning needs.
There are four techniques to develop learning materials as explained by Harsono (2007).They are evaluating, adapting, supplementing, and creating.The first technique is evaluation technique, it becomes the most common technique which is used by educators so far.To do so, educators distribute questionnaires and conducted interviews to students and certain teachers to know the effectiveness the existing learning materials.After the educators get the feedback from the students and teachers, they might start improving the existing learning materials.The second technique is adaptation technique.Since educators are allowed to adapt learning materials from various sources, they adapt certain texts obtained from online sources or printed materials such as magazine and newspaper to make them fit with the language proficiencies and characteristics of the students in their classes.
The third technique is supplementation technique.When the existing learning materials are not in line with the syllabus, educators create new learning materials to cover up the drawback of the existing learning materials.The last technique is called development technique.Educators develop new learning materials in accordance to their students' learning needs and target needs.To that end, educators distribute a questionnaire to the students to elicit their learning goals, course objectives, required skills, expected course objectives, and language problems encountered in the classrooms.Furthermore, the results of the needs analysis will become the basis for educators to develop new learning materials.
Critical literacy has been integrated into learning curricula in some western countries such as America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several European countries.The real example of the integration of critical literacy is that the mastery of critical literacy skills becomes one of the learning objectives (Zhang, 2015).For example, the objectives of the reading class are not only to encourage students to comprehend a reading text, but also to equip them with critical literacy skills.So that, they are be able to reveal the author's ideology inscribed in a text.On the other hand, the implementation of critical literacy in Asian countries, especially Indonesia, is still very rare.Language skills, such as reading, writing, speaking, and listening, are still taught separately.(Suryanto, 2017).As a matter of fact, critical literacy skills are very important for students in the 21st century language learning.Luke & Dooley (2011) assert that critical literacy as an approach used to analyze a text and examine the transform relation of political, cultural and social power.Equally important, Janks (2012) point out that critical literacy might encourage students to read against the grains and develop alternative reading about a social issue presented in a text.
Implementing critical literacy approach in EFL class requires appropriate learning strategies and learning materials.Teachers consider two main aspects to implement critical literacy approach in the learning process; learning materials and the students' English language proficiency level (Setyorini, 2018).To achieve the learning objectives, teachers should select the appropriate learning materials.Critical literacy class needs contextual and provoking reading topics.In addition, the reading topics must be adapted from the social, political, and cultural issues in which the students familiar with.It is important to help students reflect on their previous experiences in their daily lives.Furthermore, teachers are also allowed to adapt and adopt a reading text to make it fit with the English proficiency level of the students in the classrooms.The implementation of a critical literacy approach in the learning process is encapsulated in the critical literacy frameworks as proposed by several experts such as Luke & Freebody (1999); Lewison, Flint, & Sluys (2002); (Ciardiello, 2004), Janks (2012) and Abednia (2015).Furthermore, the approach is enacted in the classrooms through various learning tasks and activities (Behrman, 2006) for instance reading supplementary texts, reading multiple texts, reading texts from opposing points of view, writing counter texts, conducting student-choice research project, and participating in social action.
The purpose of this study is to develop critical literacy-based instructional reading materials for teaching EFL reading class.Therefore, this study attempts to answer these research questions: 1. How are the proposed critical literacy-based instructional reading materials be developed?
2. How are the critical literacy-based instructional reading materials be established?

METHOD
This research employs research and development (R&D).Sugiyono (2016) points out that research and development is a type of research which aims to develop and test the effectiveness of the developed product.It is expected that the developed product is useful to improve the teaching and learning process.Furthermore, the product which was produced in this research is critical literacy-based reading materials.To develop the learning materials, the researcher used the developmental model which was proposed by Plomp and Nieveen (2010).This developmental model is widely used across the globe to develop teaching kits such as teaching materials, learning media, and learning approach.
Plomp's developmental model (2010) consists of three phases; the preliminary phase, prototype phase, and assessment phase.The first phase is the preliminary phase which aims to examine the fundamental problems which become the basis for developing the learning materials.In this first phase, the researcher analysed the relevant theories, existing reading materials, curriculum, and learning needs and target needs of the students in a reading class.Referring the results of the preliminary phase, the researcher designed the critical literacy-based reading materials.In the second phase, the researcher selected some reading texts which are able to raise students' critical awareness.In the same way, the researcher also created proper learning objectives and appropriate reading tasks and assignments, and also learning assessment to measure the improvement of the students' critical literacy skills.The last phase is the assessment phase which aims to measure the validity and effectiveness of the developed products.In this research, there were two validators assessed the validity of the product.During the validation process, the researcher revised and improved the developed product on the basis of the feedback given by the validators.After finishing the validation process, the researcher evaluated the practicality of the developed product by distributed a questionnaire for the students to ask the feedback of the developed product.This step was followed by conducting a field testing in a reading class which demonstrated the effectiveness of the critical literacy-based reading materials.
There are three instruments used in this research; questionnaire, observation sheet, and reading test.Consequently, there are two types of data obtained in this research; quantitative data which were derived from needs analysis questionnaire, students and lecturers' response, validator questionnaire, and also reading test.Equally important, the qualitative data which were originated from student lecturer interviews, document analysis, and classroom observation.Furthermore, the qualitative data were analysed by organizing the information obtained from questionnaires and interviews based on the particular categories.Likewise, the researcher analysed the quantitative data by finding the average score of the developed products which were assessed by the validators and converting the total score to examine the feasibility of the product.The assessment criteria are shown in table 1.Instead of distributing questionnaires, the researcher also conducted document analysis to examine the implementation of critical literacy in reading classes.The documents are the curriculum, existing reading materials, learning activities, and learning assessment.Furthermore, the results of the document analysis and needs analysis become the basis to develop critical literacy-based instructional reading materials.The results of the document analysis sum up in the table 3. The results of document analysis indicate that some reading classes in English Language Education Study Program employ conventional reading class.During the learning process, the lecturers dominated the class.The students passively accepted the information without critically analyse and challenge the information given by their lecturers.In the same way, however developing critical thinking skills are one of the learning objectives in reading class, the learning process focused on text comprehension.

Prototyping Phase
On the basis of needs analysis and document analysis, the researcher developed critical literacy-based instructional reading materials.It was equipped with Teacher's Book as the guidance for lecturers to implement instructional reading materials in the classrooms.Furthermore, the pattern of the developed instructional reading materials is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Reading Materials
To assess the validity of the developed product, the prototype of instructional reading materials was validated by two validators.They are reading scholar and critical literacy experts from Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta.Moreover, the validators assessed four aspects of the developed product; content, presentation, language, and graphic as shown in table 4. Equally important, the materials present coherence among sentences and paragraphs which are important to help students understand the materials.The validators also argued that the text book has an attractive lay out which make readers intriguing to read.In the presentation aspect, the reading materials encourages students to think critically and creatively by giving them opportunities to solve social problems which occur in their society.

Evaluation Phase
In the evaluation phase, the developed product was tested in the field testing to evaluate the effectiveness of the product.There were 17 students participated in the study.They were English Language Education Study Program students in a private university in Yogyakarta.Furthermore, the effectiveness of the product was seen from the results of reading tests and also students' responses.The product field testing was conducted by using experimental research which involved one control class and one experimental class.Table 5 indicates that the score in the experimental class was higher than that the score in the control class.Also, it is clearly seen that the maximum score of the pre-test and post-test in the experimental class was higher than in the control class.After calculating the descriptive analysis of the pre-and post-tests, the researcher counted the normality test to examine that the two data set were derived from the same distribution.Table 6 shows that the data passed the normality test from Kologorov-Smirnov test.It was proven from the Sig.> 0.05 which demonstrates that the data were in the normal distribution.Another instrument which were used to assess the effectiveness of the developed product is questionnaire to show the students' responses as shown in table 8.The students argued that the instructional reading materials are very appropriate used in Reading class.The materials are understandable and systematic.The book contains comprehensible inputs in terms of texts and pictures, interesting learning tasks and activities, and suitable learning instruction.

Analysis of Preliminary Phase
The reading topics presented in the instructional reading materials were selected based on the students' preferences as reflected in the results of the needs analysis.The two main reading topics chosen by the students are discrimination and environmental issues.Both of them are the social problems which often occur in Indonesia.The findings of this study support the previous studies which was conducted by Aliakbari and Faraji (2011).They argued that reading topics in critical literacy classes must adapt the social issues which take place in the society where the students live.The learning materials which are relevant with the students' daily lives might facilitate them to reflect on their previous experiences.In the same way, Ciardiello (2004) (Masduqi, 2011;Lily, 2014;Qarqez and Rashid, 2017;Rohmah, 2018;Guntur and Pordanjani, 2019).Those problems are lack of vocabularies, the absence of critical thinking skills, insufficient linguistic competence, low reading motivation.They also encountered non-linguistic problems which are related to anxiety.In this study, the students also encountered problems on vocabulary as they read reading texts.Also, they are lack of critical thinking skills to identify possible meaning, read a text from multiple perspectives, identify opinion in a text, analyse particular view in a text, and examine hidden purpose inscribed by the author.In addition, the conventional reading class clearly reflects in this study.The students worked on understanding comprehension exercises.In the meantime, the lecturers gave appraisal by determining the right and wrong responses.Assiddiq (2019) believes that some problems which arose in EFL reading classes result from the implementation of conventional reading class.To overcome these problems, teaching reading in EFL reading class should empower students with critical literacy skills rather than teaching discrete language skills, reading strategies, and reading skills, and also merely training communicative competences.
Regarding the learning source, this study confirms the previous study which was conducted by Widyawati and Fitriah (2023).Students are more prefer learning reading by using online materials than printed materials.As the students reading texts which were adapted from online sources, they have a higher level of selfefficacy.It was indicated by the improvement of their reading motivation which contribute to their reading comprehension.

Analysis of Prototyping Phase
The sequences of the developed materials were developed in accordance with the critical literacy framework as proposed by Abednia (2015).In the prereading stage, the students have brainstorming activities on the related topic.There are some pictures presented in the text book to help students reflect on their previous experiences.Afterward, the students should ask several questions which lead them to the topic.In the whilereading stage, the students have a reading text about controversial issue which occur in the society.Every chapter in the textbook does not only present a provoking reading text, but also give insightful vocabulary building and reading skills activities for the students.During reading phase, the students have abundance opportunities to develop their critical literacy skills through group work activities.The textbook encourages them to read from multiple perspectives and create critical questions based on the given issue.In the postreading phase, the students articulate their voices through writing reflective journal activity.Reflective journal is a suitable media to train their writing skills and also critical literacy skills.
Regarding to the validation process, the validators assessed the developed materials based on the four indicators.Those indicators are content, presentation, language, and graphic which were adopted from National Education Standard Board (Badan Nasional Standar Pendidikan, 2016).Actually, there are other scholars who proposed textbook evaluation criteria.Litz (2005) defined the criteria for text book evaluation on these criteria; practical consideration, layout design, activities, skills, language types, subject content, and overall consensus.Alamri (2008) expanded the criteria for evaluating textbook by appending more criteria such as general appearance, accompanying materials, objectives, topic contents, language contents, social cultural context, teachability, flexibility, teaching method, practice and testing.Overall, this study employed the textbook evaluation criteria as proposed by National Education Standard Board because those criteria fit with the characteristics of textbook which was developed for Indonesian context.

Analysis of Evaluation Phase
The researcher employed reading tests to assess the effectiveness of the developed materials.The first reading test is pre-test, it was before the students learnt reading by using instructional reading materials.In the meantime, the second reading test is post-test.The students got post-test after they finished five meetings learning reading by using the instructional reading materials.The tests assessed five components of critical literacy skills such as accuracy, clarity, depth, analysing, and uncovering hidden message.
The results of reading tests in the experimental class was higher than in the control class.Among the five indicators of critical literacy skills, the students obtained the highest score on clarity.Paul and Elder (2013) stated that clarity is the use of fact, data, and example to support the arguments.In this case, the students are able to support their arguments as they discussed an environmental issue with relevant examples and empirical data.Also, the students are skilful to compare and contrast other sources to check the credibility of the information.On the other hands, the students got the lowest score on analysing.It is perceived as the complete accuracy to interpret information for understanding and selecting relevant evidence (Paul and Elder, 2013).The biggest challenge faced by the students in Reading class is to read between the lines.During the while-reading phase, most of them achieved a literal comprehension.They realized that they need more critical reading practice to uncover hidden messages presented in a reading text.
The instructional reading materials were presented in Student's Book and also Teacher's Book.The results of the students' responses demonstrate their feedback given after the materials were delivered in their Reading class.Overall, the students and lecturers argued that the developed materials are effective to raise students' awareness.By reading several reading texts on provoking issues, the students got new insight on some social problems which occurred in their societies.For the product improvement, the students suggested that the Student's book should have more understandable learning instruction and input in the form of pictures and graphics.This study corroborates the previous research which was conducted by Rohadi (2018).He also developed critical literacybased instructional reading materials used for teaching Reading class in State Islamic Institute (Institute Agama Islam Negeri).In this study, the developed reading materials could be used for broader scope.The instructional reading materials fit with reading classes in English Language Education Study Programs both in state and private universities.

CONCLUSION
Critical literacy-based instructional reading materials are badly needed by the students in reading class due to the two practical reasons.First, they need learning materials which encourage them to face the global challenges in the 21 st century.The materials which are able to develop their critical literacy skills, so that they build their critical standpoint as they read a reading text.In the same way, they can evaluate the trustworthiness of the information and challenge the common reading.Second, the existing curriculum and learning materials in Reading class have not supported the development of students' critical literacy skills.Banking education system is still implemented in the existing Reading class.Furthermore, critical literacy-based instructional reading materials were developed in a systematic way.The developed product was validated by two validators to evaluate its validity.After the validators claimed that the developed product is appropriate used for teaching reading, it underwent a field testing to see the effectiveness of the product.The results of the field testing indicate that the instructional reading materials are effective to improve the students' critical literacy skills, it was proven from the results of the reading tests which were conducted in the experimental and control classes.The students who were taught by using critical literacy-based instructional reading materials are more knowledgeable on critical literacy skills.The materials encouraged them to understand the social issues and also participate in social action to solve those problems which occur in the society.

Table 4 . Results of Product Validation
The results of validation process demonstrate that the instructional reading materials are appropriate for teaching reading in EFL classes.The text book contains up-to-date reading materials which are related to students' daily lives.

Table 6 . Normality Test Tests of Normality
**.This is a lower bound of the true significance.a. Lilliefors Significance Correction

Table 8 . Students' Responses Toward Instructional Reading Materials
points out several reading topics which can develop students' critical literacy skills.Those topics are child labor,