Reading Comprehension and Expository Writing Skills of Elementary School Students: A Barrett Taxonomy Analysis

Abstract

Reading comprehension and expository writing are the twin pillars of literacy that determine how far elementary students can learn from text, yet national and international assessments consistently place Indonesian learners well below expected levels. This study aimed to describe and analyze the initial profile of fifth-grade students' reading comprehension based on Barrett's taxonomy and their expository writing skills based on six assessment aspects, as an empirical foundation for designing literacy instruction that moves beyond literal reading. A quantitative descriptive approach was employed with 224 fifth-grade students from eight elementary schools in Purwakarta Regency, West Java, Indonesia, comprising public, private, and Islamic schools that had implemented the School Literacy Movement. Reading comprehension was measured using an eight-item essay test representing four levels of Barrett's taxonomy, while expository writing was assessed using a six-aspect analytic rubric. The data were analyzed descriptively through means, percentages, and category distributions. The findings show that reading comprehension reached a mean score of 47.8 on a 0 to 100 scale, classified in the poor category, with a declining pattern from literal comprehension (72.5%) to reorganization (56.3%), inferential (33.8%), and evaluative comprehension (28.8%). Expository writing reached a mean of 49.2, also in the poor category, with text structure (40.0%) and argumentation (37.5%) as the weakest aspects. A total of 78.1% of students were in the poor category for reading comprehension and 81.3% for expository writing, with no student reaching the very good category in either competency. These findings imply that literacy instruction in Indonesian elementary schools must shift from reading habits toward comprehension instruction that explicitly targets higher order thinking and provides modeling and guided practice of text structure and argumentation in expository writing.