An analysis of graded readers for compulsory secondary education in Spain: A mixed study

The use of graded readers, whether compulsory or optional, is a common practicein many secondary schools in Spain. Many English departments include these readersin their annual teaching programmes because their use promotes effective learning andimproves students’ language skills, both productive and receptive. The main objectiveof this paper was to examine the material that publishers included in their collectionsof graded readers for the subject of English as a foreign language in the 4th year ofCompulsory Secondary Education (CSE). For this purpose, a mixed study was conductedfollowing a concurrent design and using a 16-item questionnaire developed by theresearcher and validated by several experts according to Lawshe’s content validity ratiomodel. The sample analysed 173 graded readers belonging to nine publishers with suchmaterial for CSE by means of a parametric analysis of variance (ANOVA). The researchhypothesis was that publishers do not include the same material in their graded readers’collections. The research results confirm that not all publishers include the same materialin their collections.