READABILITY OF RECOMMENDED BIOLOGY TEXTBOOKS AS CORRELATE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS' ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN ENUGU STATE

The study examined the readability of biology textbooks as correlate of secondary school students’ academic achievement in biology in Enugu State. Two research questions and one null hypothesis guided the study. The study adopted correlation survey research design. The population consisted of six recommended biology textbooks used in Enugu state and 12,500 senior secondary school II students offering biology in 292 public secondary schools in the state. The sample consist of four commonly used biology textbooks and 370 (127 males and 243 females) biology students selected from 30 senior secondary schools used for the study. The instruments for data collection were Cloze test of readability of Biology textbook (CTRBT), and 2022 Biology Mock examination result for senior secondary II (SS II) which were collected from the sampled school to measure students’ academic achievement. The instruments were validated and trial tested on 20 SS2 biology students. The data collected were used to calculate the reliability of the instrument using Kuder-Richardson 20 Formula. It yielded a reliability of 0.85.  The mock are standardized and therefore assumed to be reliable. Mean and Pearson Product correlation were used to answer the research questions while t-test for correlation was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that the readability level of the biology textbooks was easy for the male students and fairly difficult for the female students. The results equally revealed that a positive relationship exists between the readability of biology textbooks and students’ academic achievement. It was therefore, recommended that teachers should provide feedbacks on the readability of Biology textbooks to the authors and publishers who in turn should revise the recommended Biology textbooks in the light of comment raised