Sri Diana, M. Basri Wello, Baso Jabo
The purpose of this study was to investigate Chemical Engineering students’ responses of text types and reading topics for English reading materials development. This is inspired by the fact that English reading materials used by students of Chemical Engineering at Polytechnic ATI of Makassar were only taken from textbooks or in other words there were no text types variations, and some of the reading topics were not related to Chemical Engineering Department anymore. Qualitative research design was used in this study with quantitative data collection. Data were only collected through questionnaires and were analyzed with descriptive statistics (the interpretations of frequencies and percentages). The questionnaires consisted of 2 sections. The first section aimed at analyzing the Chemical Engineering students’ responses on how important reading text types are for English reading materials development. The second section aimed at analyzing the responses of Chemical Engineering students of how important reading topics are for their English reading materials development. The results of the study revealed that “textbooks (81,7%)”, “journals (78,3%)”, “procedural account (71,7%)”, “articles (71,7%), “magazines (65%)” were the most important text types of English reading materials for Chemical Engineering students. The rests of text types such as “procedure (61,7%)”, “discussion (51,7%)”, “exposition (50%)”, “factual recount (46,7%)”, “explanation (45%)”, “factual description (41,7%)” and “information report (36,7%)” were also very important but the percentage of each text type was lower than other text types. Another results of this study also showed that “the chemical future of coal (83,3%)”, “how gas is made (83,3%)”, “oxygen (83,3%), “methane gas (81,7%), “basic chemistry (78,3%), “basic laboratory work (76,7%), “hydrogen (76,7%) and “the atom (75%) were the most five important reading topics for English reading materials development chosen by Chemical Engineering students. The other reading topics such as “liquid air (73,3%)”, “liquid waste (71,7%)” and “solid waste (66,7%)” were also considered very important by Chemical Engineering students as reading topics for English reading materials but the percentage of each reading topic was lower than the other five reading topics. © 2020 Asian EFL Journal Press. All rights reserved.
State University of Makassar, UNM, Indonesia
