Storytelling method using big book to improve children's listening skill

Submitted: February 2, 2020 Accepted: April 30, 2020 Published: Mei 2, 2020 DOI: 10.26555/jecce.v3i1.1692 Abstract The low of listen ability in children aged 5-6 years is the background of this action research, so this research aims to improve these abilities. One method that has proven to be effective solve that problem is the method of storytelling with a big book. Data on classroom action research was collected using observation techniques and analyzed in quantitative descriptive. This study involved ten students as participants. The result of the study showed that storytelling with a big book can improve the listening skill of 5-6 years old children in PAUD Bintang Mutiara, Pekanbaru. Before applying storytelling method with big book, the participants’ listening skill was categorized as ‘has not been developed”. After applying the storytelling method with big book, their listening skill was categorized as “Developed as expected” with a score of 71.67%. The improvement of participants’ listening skill from ‘pre-cycle’ to ‘cycle 1’ was 21%. From cycle I to cycle II, their listening skill was improved by 64%. From pre-cycle to cycle II, the improvement was 89%. Overall, the improvement of listening skills was 75.56%.


INTRODUCTION
Listening skill is important for human. Many knowledge and experiences are obtained from listening activities. We spend most of our daily life by listening. Listening is an inseparable activity of human life's aspect (Ridyawati, 2015). Considering that children build their cognitive foundation during their childhood, it is important to teach them listening skill in ECE level.
This skill plays important role in developing children's linguistic aspects. In language aspect, this skill is a part of receptive language. Children's good receptive language development will support their expressive language development. Expressive language can be improved through various methods, one of them is role play (Yuniati & Rohmadheny, 2020).
However, the development of expressive language requires support from receptive language. Therefore, its development, especially listening, should gain teacher's serious attention.
Some cases show that children's listening skill needs improvement. Based on the result of observation conducted in PAUD Bintang Mutiara Pekanbaru, some phenomena relating to children's listening skill were discovered. Majority of students lacked understanding of instruction within a story (e.g., instruction to follow examples of characters of figure in the story). Besides, they also had not been able to repeat a complex sentence in a story, which is shown by their confusion when expressing and repeating a sentence. The observation result also shows that they cannot understand rules of a game properly. They also stated that they did not like the story, making them not to pay attention when teachers read them a story. The result of the observation indicates children's low level of listening skill.
Listening skill is important for learning activities, with good listening skill, children may find it easier to understand the topics being discussed in the learning activities. A proper, suitable learning method also emerges as important part to develop good listening skill.
Therefore, teachers need to perform actions to improve students' language development, especially listening skill. A range of strategies can be applied to improve children's listening skill, one of them is storytelling using big book.
Storytelling serves as the method, while big bog serves as the media. As a method, storytelling refers to an activity done by an individual to deliver a message, information, or a story verbally or written (Habsari, 2017). Big book is a learning material that also functions as a learning approach because its user needs certain approach to use it (Nurlaili, 2018). Storytelling with big book serves as a method that makes children listening to the teacher's story through big pictures in book shown in accordance with the teacher's story. Using this method, children's listening skill can be improved. The present classroom action research is conducted to prove the effectiveness of storytelling with big book in improving preschool-aged children's listening skill.

METHOD
The present study was categorized as Classroom Action Research. This study consisted of two cycles, which were done in accordance with Eliot (Mulyasa, 2013) as follow: (a) Planning Stage: In this stage, the plan to improve children's listening skill was designed. Determining the class to be involved in the study (i.e., PAUD Bintang Mutiara Pekanbaru). Setting the schedule of the study (i.e., July 2018). Preparing the lesson plan. Preparing observation sheet for teachers, children, and learning media. (b) Action Stage: The treatment was given three times a week in accordance with the learning subtheme in that week. Each cycle of the study consisted of three meetings. The study was conducted during odd semester of 2018/2019 academic year. The treatments were described in Table 1 below.  The participants of the study were ten 5-6 years-old children in PAUD Bintang Mutiara Pekanbaru, consisting of 5 male and 5 female children. The study was conducted in PAUD Bintang Mutiara Pekanbaru in August 2018. The data were collected using observation. To describe the data on teachers' and children's activities during the learning process, the following formula was applied.
The criteria f the percentage areas follow Percentage formula was used to determine the improvement of children's listening skill.

= − 100%
In determining the criteria, four categories were made, they were 'Not Yet Developed", "Begin to Develop", "Well Developed", "Developed as Expected". The percentage of these criteria was as follow.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION
The present study was conducted in four stages, namely planning, action, observation,and reflection stage. In the first stage, the plan was designed. It deals with the activities to be done by the teacher in the action stage. In the second stage (i.e., action stage), the plan that has been designed was implemented. In the third stage, the teacher observed the process and view the children's way of listening by applying storytelling method with big book.
The teacher also compared the activity 1 and 2 of cycle I and II. In the fourth stage, the teacher reviewed the activities, finding out the strengths and weaknesses of the implementation of storytelling big book. The result of this stage was used as a basis for improvement in the next cycle.
The next step is to seek and develop improvement by reviewing theory, conducting discussion with peers or expert, and exploring personal experience. As shown in the table above, children's listening skill during pre-cycle was 35.83%, which was categorized as 'Not Yet Developed'. In cycle I, the score of their listening skill was 43.61%, which was categorized as 'Begin to Develop', and in cycle II, the score was 71.67%, which was categorized as 'Developed as Expected". The data showed that the improvement occurred in each cycle.
Since the average score of children's listening skill is greater than 70%, it can be said that this action research succeeded. In other words, storytelling with big book can improve children's listening skill.
The increase in teacher activity is relevant with the children activity. In general, the learning activities in meeting 2 cycle II had been done well. This result showed that teachers also enjoy applying storytelling with big book. This result of research finding, which shows that teachers view big book as a helpful learning media (Kiromi & Fauziah, 2016). It is also in line with (Imroatun, 2017) who states that big book is one of the alternative media for teacher to improve the students' reading skill. This is shown by the improvement that occurred in each activity. It is shown in   Based on the improvement that occurs in every meeting, it can be said that storytelling with big book can improve 5-6 years old children's listening skill. It is shown in the following figure.
As shown in Figure 2, there was a 21% improvement between pre-cycle and cycle I, which was categorized as 'Not yet Developed', while from cycle I to cycle II, the score was 64%, which was categorized as 'Developed as expected'. Further, from pre-cycle to cycle II, the improvement was 89%, which was categorized 'well-developed'. The previous study found that storytelling can improve children's listening skill. This is supported by the finding of the present study which shows there is an improvement in children's listening skill. In other words, storytelling is suitable to improve children's listening skill (Nurhayani, 2010).
In cycle I, children's listening skill was improved, the average score was 43.61% and was categorized as "begin to develop", this improvement was also followed by the increase in teacher's activity (mean score = 51.11%) and children's activity (mean score= 60%). This result showed that children's listening skill was improved after storytelling method with big book was applied.
This is relevant with statment that storytelling is an activity of delivering information about value or cultural tradition to children both verbally or in writing in order to develop social skill, reading skill, and understanding of knowledge through experience (Aprianti et al., 2016;Gusal, 2017;Ramdhani et al., 2019) . This is asserted by (Septiyani & Kurniah, 2017) who states that story can affects children's mindset and behavior because they like to listen to it.

Figure 2. Hypothesis Testing on the Improvement of Children's Listening Skill
Furthermore, when teachers use big book as the media to tell the story, children's listening skill may be affected because they pay attention to the story and the picture in big book.
Teachers should be creative and innovative in developing children's six developmental aspects, especially language development, namely speaking and listening skill. In addition to big book, there are many other media that can be used to enhance children's speaking and listening skill, one of them is video (Azizah, 2018). In addition, the result of the study shown that role play can be used as a method to improve children's social and speaking skill (Siska, 2011). Another study that serial picture can stimulate students' thought, improving their speaking skill (Aprinawati, 2017). From the result of the studies described above, it could be concluded that children's listening skill can be improved through big book, among other media.
Storytelling method can affect children's development of expressive or receptive language (Anggraeni et al., 2019). This is in line with (Yarger, 2006) who states that storytelling with big book can better affect children's listening skill. In the present study, cycle II exhibited greater improvement than cycle I did (i.e 71.67%). This improvement may be affected by the increase in teacher's and children's activity (i.e., 80% and 80,44%, respectively), which was categorized as 'good'. This result of study found that storytelling with simple story book can improve children's listening skill (Widayati & Simatupang, 2019). It indicates that applying storytelling method with big book makes children find it easier to improve their listening skill.
Story is useful for achieving the purpose of early childhood education purpose since children like to listen to story, they view it as a fun activity (Ningsih, 2013). The result of the study shows that teacher can use storytelling activity to internalize honesty, bravery, loyalty, and other positive attitudes in family, school, and community lives (Khotijah, 2016). Besides, storytelling also brings social knowledge, moral, and religious values. (Zaman et al., 2010).
Storytelling method can be used to provide information regarding children's social life and their surrounding people with various occupations (Setiantono, 2012). Further, storytelling method helps children build various roles they may choose and various services they want to give to the community (Guido et al., 2015).
As a learning media, big book can also be adjusted to local wisdom. Stories in big book can be adjusted to values of local culture. Putting local stories into big book makes it more interesting, as proven by (Falah, 2018) who developed a big book using Javanese language.
In this study, there was a 21% improvement of children's listening skill from pre-cycle to cycle I. From cycle I to cycle II, there was 64% improvement, while from pre-cycle to cycle II, there was 89% improvement. This result indicated that the children's listening skill was improved in each cycle when storytelling with big book was applied. In other words, storytelling can be used as one of activities to improve children's listening skill because they view it as a fun activity. Besides, storytelling with big book may influence children's listening skill.

CONCLUSION
The present study concludes that storytelling method with big book can improve children's listening skill. Based on the discussion between the researchers and the observer, the teacher has delivered the material systematically and use the time efficiently. Besides, the teacher is also able to depict the relationships among the content. The teacher's control was improved, causing children to be more serious in learning activities. Initially, the children can only listen to the story, but now they are able to listen and retell the story. The children's listening skill was improved by 21% in pre-cycle to cycle I. From cycle I to cycle II, their listening skill was improved by 64%. From pre-cycle to cycle II, the improvement was 89%. Overall, the improvement of listening skill was 75.56%.