Developing an intensive reading material for EFL students : A final product

Article history: Received: Dec 23, 2021 Revised: Feb 02, 2022 Accepted: Feb 08, 2022 This research aims at developing the Intensive Reading material for the second-semester students of English Language Education Program. It is a Research and Development study that was done by using Reeves’ (2000) Design-Based Research model. Tomlinson’s (1998) notion of learning material is also used as one of the considerations in developing the material since the material needed by the students should contribute to the students’ needs. The needs analysis showed that the intensive reading skills are still considered difficult for some students. Additionally, the content of the product is based on the syllabus and the Outcome Based Education (OBE) curriculum. The researcher developed 11 units of Intensive Reading material based on the previous needs analysis data. It covers the descriptive, narrative, recount, and procedure text materials, as those types of text are supposed to be taught in the Intensive Reading class. Moreover, materials related to the intensive reading skills such as scanning, skimming, previewing, predicting, building a powerful vocabulary, context clues, and understanding topic, main idea, and paragraph are also included in the final product. The Intensive Reading material were validated by two experts. In addition, it will be tried out to the second-semester students and to the three English lecturers in the English Language Education Program of Universitas Brawijaya Malang.

students' academic achievement. Day & Bamford (1998), Krashen (1999), and Anderson (1999) state that the more students gain the reading ability, the more they will achieve in all academic domains. Based on the ideas, the students' reading proficiency is essential because it will take them to better cognition not only linguistically, but also socially.
Reading is essential, especially for students. Mickulecky & Jeffries (2004) state that reading is very important since it can enhance students' general language skills in English, assist students to think in English, expand students' English vocabulary, improve their writing, and assist students to obtain new ideas, facts, and experiences. As a consequence of this perspective, reading comprehension is considered as a mechanism that can assist students in broadening their comprehension of the English language. According to Harmer (2003), from all four language skills, reading is considered as one of the receptive skills of English. At the same time, all four language skills are closely related one another. The ability to read English-language texts is crucial for reading the textbook. Krashen (2004) concludes that reading for pleasure is potent enough to facilitate the growth of one's language development. Therefore, it is recommended for students who pursue their education into senior high school and university to practice free voluntary reading or recreational reading.
Reading can be challenging for some EFL students due to its aspects, such as comprehension, diction, and orthography. One of the approaches to assist students with their reading challenges is to include appropriate materials that are relevant for their level of proficiency. Hirano (2014) says that EFL students have some issues with their language use when reading. According to the preliminary studies, there is a mismatch between Outcome Based Education (OBE) curriculum in the English Language Education Program and the content of the previous materials. They did not match the needs of the students, like the type of texts which are not supposed to be taught in the level of intensive reading. The existing material also covers very little exposure to the text types which are supposed to be learnt for the students' level, the descriptive, recount, and procedure texts. Since the existing material is irrelevant, it can create confusion and comprehension difficulties for EFL students. Unless they are handled at the right stage, EFL students will not be able to comprehend the material and will be disappointed when they must digest anything they are not ready for. Because of the improper content in the current materials, students are less interested in reading, which can lead to problems in all learning fields, as previously discussed. Thus, this current research aims at developing appropriate material for Intensive Reading class which meets the criteria of the OBE curriculum applied in the English Language Education Program.
Outcome-Based Education (OBE) is promoted worldwide to revive the educational system. Many countries including United States of America, Philippines, and South Africa have implemented OBE at their countries (Malan 2000). OBE is a basic shift from 'Educentric Paradigm' to 'Empowerment Paradigm', a student-centered and future-oriented paradigm that empowers and supports students with future success (Spady and Marshall, 1991). Additionally, Spady and Marshall (1991) also state that transformational OBE equips each student with the skills, knowledge, attitude, and orientations required for the success in life. Shaheen (2019) states that there are three Educational Objectives: cognitive domain (dealing with cognition and intellect), affective domain (dealing with emotions, feelings and beliefs) and psychomotor domain (dealing with skills). In order to fit the requirements of OBE curriculum, the Intensive Reading materials developed in this study must include cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains.
Reading is generally considered to be concerned with the language messages found in written or printed texts. Reading is a valuable skill to master because it allows students to make sense of written and printed texts and derive meaning from them. To understand the purpose of literacy and to interpret a printed or written text, students must be able to comprehend the contents of the page and derive meanings from it. Alvermann & Montero (2003) state that reading is the process of drawing out meaning from texts, both written and printed. This complex process includes many components. What is meant by components here is something like phonemic awareness, phonics, etc. In addition, Armbruster et al. (2001) mention that the five main areas of reading are phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. The development of phonics is affected by phonetic awareness and required for word recognition. Meanwhile, word recognition is necessary for fluency, which is important for reading comprehension (Eldredge, 2005). Therefore, before establishing good reading comprehension skill, students must acquire several essential skills, such as: decoding, fluency, background knowledge, vocabulary, motivation, and engagement.
Those notions are also supported by Lems et al. (2010) who define reading as language process of understanding written texts. In such activity, there are two processes that they call as process of perception, or word cognition, and process of thought, or decoding. Word cognition refers to letters seen in print and the speech sounds that these letters represent. By knowing the phonetic transcription, the reader is permitted to say, to pronounce, to recognize, to decode and to solve the pronunciation of words being read. Meanwhile decoding means the process of drawing out meaning from words and sentences through connected grammatical knowledge to help the reader comprehend written texts. Tomlinson (1998) defines learning materials as anything used by teachers or students to facilitate language learning. Materials can take many forms, ranging from traditional resources to high-tech items like the internet, both of which contribute to the requirements and needs of both students and learning.
The needs of the students must be determined before the material is designed, so that the produced material will later meet those needs. In attempts to do it, the course developers have to investigate what the students should do with the target situation (target needs) and what the students are required to do in order to learn (learning needs) (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). In addition, a material should not only provide a sufficient input in authentic use of language, but should also cover the activities that help the students to notice the elements of the text being learnt. This is in line with Richard 's (2001) view about the importance of authentic material in CBI classroom. He mentioned that the developed learning material should guide the students to be autonomous students by doing the task. Moreover, the resources should be useful to teachers as an instruction rather than a script. It means that the teacher should be able to explore the material by considering the goal and learning needs of the students, rather than to follow the instruction. Palmer (1921) defines intensive reading as a process where the readers read a text, analyze it line by line, and consult the grammar of the text with the dictionary. The intensive reading also focuses on how accurate the students' understanding of the text which can be done through reading in a long span of consistent reading activities to lead to total comprehension. Intensive reading mostly focuses on the comprehension, sound-spelling, relations, vocabulary, cohesion, information structure, Genre features, and strategies by emphasizing detailed study of vocabulary and grammar. The implementation of guided reading in the language classroom aids students in improving their achievement. A detailed analysis of the intensive reading materials allows students to master the language effectively. Nation (2009) states that there are seven procedures in intensive reading such as Overview, Planning purposes, Questions, Reading, Reflection, Testing, and Understanding.
Intensive reading is important for students to learn because it helps them understand grammatical forms and context of a text as a whole, both explicit and implicit meanings. This statement is in line with Brown (1989) that explains intensive reading focuses on grammatical forms, discourse markers, and other details in order to understand literal meaning, implications, and rhetorical relationships. However, the current Intensive Reading materials are not in accordance with the needs and abilities of students which cause problems. To overcome these problems, the development of intensive reading teaching materials that suit the needs of students is necessary.
Studies related to developing or experiences in developing reading materials have been conducted by several researchers. Sari & Atmanegara (2018) developed ESP reading materials for accounting students. The product development process is similar to what is used in the present study. However, Sari & Atmanegara's (2018) aimed to develop reading materials that focused on accounting topics, while the present study develops material for Intensive Reading class. Next, Kusrini et al.'s (2018) was able to produce English reading materials for EFL learners. The material in their study was developed based on the needs analysis, while the material in the present study was developed based on the needs analysis and the OBE curriculum. Finally, Aziz et al.'s (2020) discovered teachers' experiences in developing reading materials for an EFL classroom. The research method used in their study is different from the one used in the present study since both studies deal with different issues. However, the findings from Aziz et al.'s (2020) can be used as an insight for the researcher in developing the Intensive Reading material.
As stated previously, the content in the current Intensive Reading materials is considered irrelevant. The curriculum used in the English Language Education Program is regularly modified to fit the students' needs. These modifications require lecturers to compile and deliver appropriate material to their students. The appropriate material of Intensive Reading class which meets the criteria of the OBE curriculum and the material development for Intensive Reading class is essentially needed to support the better teaching of reading. Therefore, this research is conducted to produce appropriate reading materials for the Intensive Reading class. The reading materials will be able to answer students' needs while catering to the OBE curriculum.

METHOD Participants
This current study involves three English lecturers and the second-semester students of English Language Education Program of Universitas Brawijaya who are taking the Intensive Reading class which is offered in the second semester. The second semester students belong to the last stage of A2 to beginning of B1 according to the CEFR (British Council, 2011). In this level, they are supposed to be able to understand the main idea and supporting details of authentic narrative and descriptive texts. The participants will participate in the stage of try-out of the final product as a critical thinking measurement. Thus, the materials were designed with the consideration of participants' needs.

Instruments
In this study, the researcher developed expert validation rubrics. The developed Intensive Reading material were validated based on two main criteria: the content and the design. The items of the content validation rubric were adapted from Dick & Carey's (2015), while the design validation rubric was adapted from Violensia (2017). The data obtained in the expert validation were analyzed by using Likert-scale measurement. There are four options in the rubrics: Strongly Disagree (SD), Disagree (D), Agree (A) and Strongly Agree (SA). The score of each scale is presented below: Source: Adopted from Arikunto (2010) Data analysis techniques in this development research are divided into two, namely qualitative data analysis and quantitative data analysis. The qualitative data were collected from the suggestions and assessments regarding Intensive Reading materials. These suggestions and assessments are used as guidelines for improving Intensive Reading materials. Meanwhile, quantitative data analysis derived from questionnaires were based on the following formula.

= ∑ ∑ 100
Where: p: percentage ∑x: total responses value on all items ∑xi: total maximum responses value on all items The product validity criteria used to determine the validity of the teaching material products in this study was referred to Akbar & Sriwijaya (2010):  (2010) Developing an intensive reading material for EFL students: A final product

Data analysis procedures
This research is development research which is also well known as the Design-Based Research. This model consists of four main essential steps such as a need analysis related to the problems occurred, Development of Solution, Evaluation and Testing, and Documentation and Reflection (Reeves, 2000).

Figure 1. Reeves' model of design-based research
Source: Adapted from Reeves (2000) A need analysis was implemented to know the issues faced by the practitioners related to whether or not they have already had the sufficient reading material in the Intensive Reading class. Richards (2001) states that need analysis can be used for different purposes. It can be performed to find out which language skills that students need to perform in a particular role and to identify the gap between the students, teachers, and institutions in deciding which competencies should be mastered by the students and what 4. The last step is the documentation and evaluation which will be in the form of a try-out. The try-out will be conducted anonymously to allow the participants to give their best answers 3. The expert validation phase in which the prototype went through a three-time expert validation to check the construct validity and the design the students want to do (Richards, 2001). Further details regarding the instruments for needs analysis can be found in the next section. The next step was the material development, which was in the form of Intensive-Reading-material prototype. Initially, the researcher mapped the reading material. The mapping covered the text samples. In order to maintain authenticity of the material, most of the texts were adapted from web-based resources. Then, the researcher developed several exercises as post-reading activities, including WH-questions, True/False questions, and arranging paragraphs. The questions were given in the form of direct reference, inference, and evaluation. The post-reading activities encourage students to learn about the descriptive, procedure, and recount texts.
In this study, the researcher designed the material according to the theory of developing good reading material. According to Abdallaoui-maan (2005), in developing reading material the reader and the language learner are the central to their learning and have to participate in that learning. Therefore, construct validity is needed to make sure these materials are correctly and properly developed. After finishing the development of the reading material, the researcher validated the tentative results to a respected expert whose expertise is in the field of material development, especially the contents. The validation phase was held for three times: before the field testing, after the first revision from the expert, and after the try-out phase. Finally, the last step of the procedure is documentation and evaluation before the measure is field tested.

FINDINGS The outcome of need analysis
In Intensive Reading class, students need to read in detail. Intensive reading learning is carried out with specific goals and tasks, in contrast to extensive reading which is only used as a form of entertainment. In the Intensive Reading class, students need to concentrate in order to fully understand the contents of the reading. Intensive reading activities include skimming text to obtain certain information and answer questions correctly. In addition, the exercises given after intensive reading include sorting paragraphs so that they become coherent paragraphs. Intensive reading also has a purpose to focus on content and grammatical structures. Lecturers can also take part in the processes of learning by asking a question. So, students get opportunities to understand the meaning of the text specifically.
The data for the need analysis were gathered from a questionnaire that was distributed to the third and fifth semester students. The questions in the need analysis questionnaire are related to the materials presented in the Intensive Reading class and the technology integration with the course material.

Figure 2. Responses to Questions 3-7 of the Need Analysis Questionnaire
The responses for questions 3-7 show that the respondents have already learnt recount text, procedure text, descriptive text, narrative text, and expository text in the Intensive Reading class. This is in line with the CEFR and the OBE curriculum which require B1 level students to learn recount, procedure, and descriptive text. Meanwhile, the narrative and expository text are supposed to be taught in the Extensive Reading class.
However, only 41.3% of the students learnt expository text in the Intensive Reading class. This suggests that the existing materials should be adjusted to students' need. Since the existing materials already include recount text, procedure text, and descriptive text, the researcher included narrative text materials based on the need analysis result. Questions 10 and 11 address the availability of teaching material for the Intensive Reading class. From the responses, it can be seen that the type of teaching material is mostly in the form of module (54%) and handout (35%). On the other hand, 68.9% of the respondents said that the teaching material was good enough, while 20% of them stated that the module or handout had already been appropriate for the Intensive Reading class. However, 11.1% of the respondents had different perception on how useful the module or the handout is, since they think that the module does not help them much while they took the course Intensive Reading class.
From question 12, it is evident most of the respondents (56.7%) agree that the passages of the module should be more various to make the learning is more challenging and engaging. Besides, a variety of materials means that students can learn more vocabularies of different topics. Meanwhile, 30% of the respondents agree that the difficulty level of the Intensive Reading material is lower than their ability of reading. The book should present more sophisticated material to make, again, the learning is more engaging. The other aspect of the material which needs to be improved is the length of the passages. 13.3% of the participants found that the passages of the module are too short which make it less interesting.

Figure 4. Responses to Questions 13-14 of the Need Analysis Questionnaire
In response to question 13, more than half of the respondents (54.4%) stated that the lecturers sometimes integrate the Intensive Reading material with technology. It is crucial since most of them are millennials who are closely familiar with technology. On the other hand, 11.1% of the respondents stated that the lecturers did not integrate the teaching and learning of the course with the technology. The lecturer only gave them passages to read and discussed it during the class session. The respondents' tendency toward the involvement of technology in Intensive Reading class is also shown in their response to question 14. The total of positive responses to the involvement of technology is 96.7%, which suggests that the involvement of technology in the Intensive Reading class to read better is crucially needed since they can browse for more information through the internet to find more reading material related to the topic at hand. They also said that more access to the reading materials in the internet will make them more engaged when they learn through their preferred way of reading.

The design of intensive reading material
The final product of this materials is in the form of a book printed on paper with a total of 208 pages. Each page is equipped with a layout that fits their needs. Each unit has illustrations and pictures that match the topics discussed. The selection of texts is adjusted to the topic, type, needs analysis, and also the ability of students. The text used in the materials is an authentic text type and text adapted from several articles. After selecting the appropriate text, the researcher developed several types of exercises that matched the text. The exercises used in this reading materials WH-questions, True/False questions, and arranging paragraphs. The questions given have difficulty levels from easy to difficult. This is done so that students can think critically.
Each unit of this teaching material contains (1) brainstorming, (2) text understanding, (3) text structure, (4) language features, (5) text examples, (6) structure examples, (7) exercises, and (8) exercise review. Brainstorming serves to equalize students' perceptions of the material to be delivered. Understanding, structure, and language features are written in detail so that students can understand thoroughly. In addition, the lecturer provides examples of texts accompanied by examples of text structures to strengthen students' understanding. Finally, the provision of training is also adjusted to the loaded text. The types of exercise in the descriptive text unit are: (1) finding the main and supporting ideas in the text, (2) finding the storyline in the text, (3) analyzing the tone of the story, (4) analyzing the written and unwritten details in the text, and (5) answering practice questions based on the text that has been given.
The Intensive Reading materials will be used for Intensive Reading class in the second semester. The materials can be used for one semester with details of one unit for one meeting. One mid-semester examination and one end-semester examination. In the first three meetings, it was used to introduce intensive reading class before entering the text material. The developed materials also have been assessed as feasible and can be used in intensive reading class.

The development of the intensive reading material
The Intensive Reading materials have been developed through the stages of planning, drafting, and expert validation test. This teaching material has gone through three stages of validation. The first validation was carried out in August 2021, the second validation was carried out in September 2021, and the last validation was carried out in October 2021. These three validations were carried out by involving two experts. The first expert is on the content of teaching materials and the second expert is on the design of teaching materials. The validation results are as follows: Based on the table above, the content validation in the first validation obtained a value of 80.3%. In the second validation obtained a value of 85.5%. Meanwhile, the last validation obtained a value of 96.2%. In addition to validating the content of teaching materials, another validation carried out is the validation of the design of teaching materials products. The first design validation got a score of 82.7%. The second validation obtained a value of 90.2%. Meanwhile, the third validation obtained a value of 94.5%. Based on this value, it can be concluded that the final result of this teaching material product gets an excellent predicate. Thus, this teaching material is feasible and can be tested after passing three validations.
The validation results from the experts stated that this teaching material was considered feasible to be tested with several revisions. In general, the suggestions and inputs from experts based on the content of teaching material are (1) adding more detailed and complete explanations to the first three units, (2) sorting the explanations of reading strategies from the easiest to the most difficult, (3) providing more varied types of exercises, (4) adding the text contained in each unit, and (5) sorting the types of practice questions from the easiest to the most difficult. Meanwhile, suggestions and input from design experts are (1) adding illustrations that are appropriate to the topic in each unit, (2) adjusting the layout of the text and images on each page, and (3) changing the font in the teaching material to be uniform. After the final revision, this product can be tried out.

The final product
The results of the revision based on input from experts have resulted in the final product of teaching material. 11 topics are formed, with concern to the students' needs, syllabus, and OBE curriculum that follow the topics listed in the CEFR. Alvermann & Montero (2003) said that reading is the process of drawing out meaning from written or printed texts. Based on this statement, the teaching materials developed in this study can help students derive knowledge from written texts. The Intensive Reading materials consists of 11 units with different topics according to the four types of text, namely: recount, narrative, descriptive, and procedure text. The selection of the type of text is based on the needs of the analysis that has been carried out. Meanwhile, reading strategy material is taught in the first three units in this teaching material. The description is as follows: Building a powerful vocabulary, context clues 3 Understanding topic, main idea, paragraph 4 Descriptive Text I -Education (Online learning) 5 Descriptive Text II -Work and Jobs (Dream job) 6 Narrative Text I -Shopping (Online shopping from abroad) 7 Narrative Text II -Leisure Activities (Improving your English by joining webinars) 8 Recount Text I -Books and Literature (Book review) 9 Recount Text II -Film (Film review) 10 Procedure Text I -Lifestyle (How to recycle plastic waste) 11 Procedure Text II -News and Media (How to filter hoaxes from online news platforms) The topics chosen in the developed materials are tailored to the needs of students. Topics are adapted to the previously designed syllabus. The developed materials have 11 units which are suitable for learning for one semester, one unit for each meeting. The first unit contains an explanation of scanning, skimming, previewing, and predicting. The second unit contains an explanation of building a powerful vocabulary and context clues. The third unit contains an explanation of the understanding topic, main idea, and paragraph. The fourth and fifth units discuss descriptive text. The sixth and seventh units discuss the narrative text. The eighth and ninth units discuss recount text. Meanwhile, the tenth and eleventh units discuss the procedure text.

DISCUSSION
Materials can take many forms, ranging from traditional resources to hightech items like the internet, both of which contribute to the requirements and needs of both students and learning. Tomlinson (1998) defines learning materials as anything which is used by teachers or students to facilitate language learning. Based on the definition, the developed material is designed according to the students' needs to facilitate intensive reading learning. Additionally, Hutchinson & Waters, 1987 state that it is necessary to determine the needs of the students before beginning to design material, so that the produced material will later meet those needs. In attempts to do it, the course developers have to figure out what the students required to do with the target situation (target needs) and what the students required to do in order to learn (learning needs). The developed material is in accordance with the OBE curriculum and CEFR. The material is also adjusted to the results of need analysis that have been done so that it can be used optimally. Moreover, expert validation results show that the developed Intensive Reading material is valid and appropriate so that it is ready to be tried out to the students.
Intensive reading needs to be taught to the students because it can help students understand the overall reading context. According to Brown (1989), intensive reading focuses on grammatical forms, discourse markers, and other details in order to understand literal meaning, implications, and rhetorical relationships. Thus, the developed Intensive Reading material is important to be taught in the Intensive Reading class. This aims to answer the problems faced by students in Academic Writing courses.
Based on the need analysis, the student's needs in the Intensive Reading class are related to the narrative text materials, the diversity of reading passages in the material, and the integration of the material with technology. One of the texts used in the Intensive Reading material is narrative text. Narrative is a piece of text that tells a story and entertains or informs the reader or listener (Anderson, 1997). Meyers (2005) supports this by stating that narrative is one of the most powerful ways to communicating with others. Based on these statements, narrative text materials need to be included in the developed Intensive Reading material. This is also in line with the students' need analysis that has been done before. Intensive reading is an activity that requires great mental effort and focuses. Because of this, students who did not follow specific guidelines when engaging in intensive reading will experience boredom and burnout (Lampariello, 2017). Thus, it is important to bring up various types of reading passages in the Intensive Reading material so that students do not feel bored during the learning process. Lastly, the developed Intensive Reading materials also needs to be integrated with technology. Suryadi (2007) reveals that the use of technology has advantages in the learning process, namely helping and facilitating students, also making students feel the benefits of technology because students can capture various colors, choices of images, sounds, videos, and other aspects of the media. Therefore, technology integration is necessary so that the Intensive Reading material is able to be used optimally.
The developed Intensive Reading material has been assessed as valid by experts and is ready to be tried out to students. The try out process can be done in small to large classes. Moreover, advanced research can be conducted to figure out the response and perception of students to the intensive reading material that have been developed in this study.

CONCLUSION
The developed Intensive Reading materials has gone through the stages of planning, drafting, and expert validation assessment. Based on the expert validation assessment, this teaching material has obtained an excellent predicate and suitable for teaching and learning process. The developed materials have 11 topics which are presented in 11 units. There are four types of text contained in the developed materials, namely recount text, narrative, descriptive, and procedure text. The developed materials are also equipped with practice questions that adapt to the text. The final product of this materials can be used in the Intensive Reading class for second-semester students.
The limitation of this research lies in the development of intensive reading materials based on the OBE curriculum. Further research can be carried out by developing intensive reading materials by using other curricula that suit the needs of students. The stages of material development in this study can be used as a reference for further research. Further research can be done by developing reading materials in the classroom that study other types of reading skills (such as the Extensive Reading class). In addition, development can also be done in the classroom with integrated skills (such as a combination of reading and speaking skills).