Developing English Textbooks Oriented to Higher Order Thinking Skills for Students of Vocational High Schools in Yogyakarta

This article is part of research and development under the issue of developing English textbooks oriented to the enhancement of higher order thinking skills (HOTS) for students of vocational high schools (VHSs) in Yogyakarta. This relies on the evidence that the existing textbooks for secondary school levels put an emphasis on memorizing and comprehending which highlight to identify linguistic features of the target language (micro-language skills). This leads to creating the failure of acquiring English language proficiency on the part of students of secondary school levels including students of VHSs. To obtain the objective, there were 14 English teachers and 320 students of vocational high schools from three regencies, namely Sleman, Yogyakarta city, and Bantul voluntarily involved. Three techniques: questionnaire distributions, interviews, and documentation were administered to get data. Then, the gathered data were analyzed using a descriptive qualitative method. In reference to data analysis, four findings are documented as explored in this part of this article. In summary, the development of the English textbooks oriented to HOTS is positively responded by the respondents as the English textbook triggers students of VHSs to establish their higher order thinking skills which lead to students’ creativity and self-regulated learning practices.