Ismail, A.,&Yusof, N. (2018). Malaysian children storybooks as ESL reading materials.

International Journal of Education and Literacy Studies, 6(3), 68-75.

Summary
The study aimed to identify the difference between Malaysian picture storybooks and
Malaysian chapter storybooks in terms of readability by using a computational tool, Coh-Metrix
TERA. This study also aimed to discuss the suitability of the subjects' readability in relation to the
second language comprehension and cognitive development theories. The study collected 10 locally
published picture storybooks and chapter storybooks each. The narrative texts from the books were
extracted and assessed by Coh-Metrix TERA. It was found that picture storybooks are different
from chapter storybooks in terms of the amount of concrete words, referential cohesion devices,
and familiar words in the texts. In general, the subjects' readability is in line with the cognitive
development theory. However, they can be improved in terms of cohesive devices and familiar
words. In brief, Malaysian picture storybooks and chapter storybooks are suitable to be used as
reading materials to learn English for Malaysian children. Nevertheless, weak readers may require
adult assistance in certain parts of the books.

Review
After reading this journal article, some viewpoints that I haven’t thought about before came to
my mind. It mentions that the reading materials for children are important to teach them about the
nation’s values under their native language context. For me, I like to teach my students by using
picture books, because there are lots of pictures inside the books. However, I haven’t thought about
the part of the values of our own culture. It is important for second language learners to understand
their own culture while they are learning some other languages and cultures. Nevertheless, if
language teachers don’t choose the suitable materials for their students, there might be some
difficulties for the young learners to learn the cultures of the target language at the same time. It’s
still a task for me to choose suitable materials for my students while I am teaching English.
Moreover, there are some aspects I want to talk about. First, the researcher only chose ten
picture books and chapter books each. I think the amount of the materials is insufficient. They
should pick up more books to make the data collected in this research more complete. Second, they
should interview some students by asking how they feel about the picture books and chapter books.
Knowing how the kids think about the picture books and chapter books is important because second
language learners are the person who read those books. Lastly, they could interview other second
language teachers, too because second language teachers are the person who are responsible for
choosing appropriate materials for their students to read.