A Comparative Study of Rural and Urban Elementary School
Students’ Perceptions of Criteria of Bilingual Children Storybook
Ni Kadek Heny Sayukti
English Education Department, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia
Keywords: Literacy, reading, children storybook, young learner, bilingual education.
Abstract: Indonesian poet and activist, Taufiq Ismail has dubbed the recent literacy development in Indonesian for
having Tragedi Nol Buku (the null book tragedy). This refers to the fact that mostly Indonesian students might
not read any single book for a year. For this reason, the current curriculum has started to promote the National
Literacy Movement at schools. Regarding the phenomenon, the study aims to describe 1) the perceptions of
elementary school students of the interest and usefulness of English story reading and 2) comparison between
rural and urban elementary students’ perceptions about character values and criteria of the bilingual storybook
for literary reading activity. The research design involved a mixed method design of qualitative data and
quantitative data. Validated Likert-scale questionnaires were administered to 146 elementary EFL (English
as Foreign Language) students in an urban area and a rural area of West Java, Indonesia. Qualitative data from
the guided interview were transcribed through coding sheet. The questionnaire and interview were developed
based on the criteria in the previous study by Dewi et al. (2016) and adapted from several scholars, Smallwood
(1988) Whiteside (2007) and Steinbeck (2008). The frequency counts and percentages were constructed
through descriptive statistics. The findings revealed valuable information about elementary students’ interest
in the English story reading and criteria of a bilingual storybook for literary activity. Both elementary students
from the urban and rural area had positive perceptions on the integration of character values into the bilingual
children storybook.
1 INTRODUCTION
Students born in the early years of the 21
st
century are
expected to be ready for challenges concerning to the
importance of using media and multimodality in
embracing literacy. Not only cognitive, the students
are considered to possess an understanding of visual
imagery (Mart, 2012). In fact, the development of
literacy in Indonesia has been rolling like a roller
coaster ride. In 2005, Indonesian poet and activist,
Taufiq Ismail has dubbed the education system
suffered from Tragedi nol buku (the null book
tragedy) after conducting a research to Indonesian
students in several area (Irsyad, 2015). As a matter of
fact, School Literacy Movement has been triggered
by Indonesian government to address the issue. The
presence of English language as a local content
subject in the curriculum also adds local cultural
values into the lesson. To respond this responsibility,
English language now has partial duty to integrate
local cultural values and character building for
children literacy development. In contrast, in the past
few years, most of Indonesian English teachers tend
to rely on the commercial printed textbook as a source
of teaching (Lengkanawati et al., 2015). Therefore,
Taufiq Ismail wrote many poems evoking how
students might never experience having the
responsibility of reading a book until they graduate.
Regarding the School Literacy Movement in
Indonesia, several problems still occur in the
implementation. Based on a research by Andi (2017),
the program needs a serious method because most of
students tend to show low interest, meanwhile most
of library still lack of literacy program. He also
highlights how mostly teachers need to practice
conducting literacy program. Moreover, the absence
of non-course book such as storybook and literature
in the library does not support the school to hold the
program. In this case, this research focuses on the
problem of student s’ perceptions and the absence of
storybook at school library. Young learners require
more exposure of books and reading material, in
particular a storybook. There have been several
studies about the importance of using storybook as a
284
Sayukti, N.
A Comparative Study of Rural and Urban Elementary School Students’ Perceptions of Criteria of Bilingual Children Storybook.
DOI: 10.5220/0007166002840289
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 284-289
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

mean of promoting literacy in the young age. A study
by Dewi et al. (2016) developed a picture storybook
for elementary students in a rural area. Based on their
survey, the students have a potential interest toward
the reading activity using bilingual storybook despite
the fact that they have low English proficiency. A
research says that when native language and target
language share the same parameter setting and
principle, there might be a positive transfer during the
language learning (Saville-Troike, 2012). Regarding
the obstacles of promoting literacy in bilingual
storybook, Parmon (2011) believes bilingual
education might not hinder the process of enhancing
cognitive thinking skills. At the same time, reading
books or storytelling can reinforce children’s
imagination and improve literacy skills (Nava and
Avila, 2013). It is clear that stated that promoting
storybook in the school library need to be developed
in order to create a linguistic influence and steady
environment of literacy learning.
Considering the phenomenon, literature and
multimodalities in a form of reading media require
advanced development to enrich more exposure for
readers. In terms of effectiveness, the purpose of this
study is describing a comparative picture of young
learners’ perception (elementary school students)
towards criteria of bilingual storybook for English
learning based in urban area and rural area. The
underlying reasons behind this study are there seem
to be few researches on developing bilingual
storybook for young learners, especially in Indonesia.
As past studies dominantly concerned on the
perception of English teaching strategy and approach,
this study intend to explore criteria for developing
bilingual storybook by reflecting on the perception of
young learners in two different areas. To achieve such
purposes, the discussion is written based on the
following objectives;
1. To examine elementary students’ perceptions
about the usefulness of character values in the
criteria of bilingual storybook.
2. To investigate comparison between rural and
urban elementary students’ perceptions about
character values and criteria of bilingual story
book for literacy reading activity.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
Several scholars have defined the meaning of
perception, children’s literature and bilingual
language learning. This study constitutes several
theoretical frameworks in defining central themes
such as perception, children’s storybook and bilingual
language learning.
2.1 The Concept of Perception
Several scholars have defined the meaning of
perception. In general, perception is defined as ‘the
organization, identification, and interpretation of
sensory information in order to represent and
understand the environment’ (Schacter, 2011).
Furthermore, there are two aspects of perception,
namely cognitive and psychology aspect (Harnad,
1987). In a further explanation, he explains that
cognitive aspect emphasizes on understanding and
making sense of thing. It can be related to
psychological aspect as how emotion, experience,
and intelligence contribute to the responses. In other
words, through a perceptual process, perception is
developed as people gain experience to what they
feel, think, and acquire in their environment.
2.2 Children’s Storybook Criteria
There are several criteria of storybooks and
multimodality integration developed by several
experts. First, Smallwood (1988) identify whether the
storybooks help to fulfil learning objectives
according to the school curriculum. The second one
is whether it uses equivalent language for children or
above the level of the learners. In this case,
vocabularies are considered to enable children refine
their language development. The last one, Smallwood
points on the importance of illustration as the visual
representation of words. When text is equipped with
picture, it helps children to imagine the story and to
tell the same story when they want to retell it to other
people.
In particular, Salas et al. (2002) describe more
specific criteria in terms of characterization and
values added in the storybook. To begin with,
characters should own authenticity without being
stereotyped. They have to be equivalent to physical,
social and emotional attributes. In term of setting, a
consistency is required either a historical setting or
contemporary. Whiteside (2007) reveals that this
characters need to be integrated with consistent
themes and values with the particular culture
mentioned in the story. Related to culture, the
illustrations, gender roles, and information should be
accurate and reliable. It has to be rich of details
because can be a new thing for young learners. The
selection should also incorporate authentic
interaction between characters with a cultural group
or between two or more cultural groups. It goes
A Comparative Study of Rural and Urban Elementary School Students’ Perceptions of Criteria of Bilingual Children Storybook
285

without saying that an objective for including
members of a “minority” group is deliberately done.
Finally, she concludes that the selection should invite
reflection, critical analysis, and response.
Another criterion from Steinbeck (2008) are taken
into account to add the possible themes and cultural
values of storybook. Steinbeck (2008) suggests
stories to be action oriented. As mentioned before, it
should be personal by using familiar characters;
meanwhile the personalization technique should be
optimized in the pre- and post- activities. They do not
need to be too detailed, both in terms of visuals and
verbal. For context extension, they have to use
comprehensible input (the language that is at the right
cognitive and linguistic level) so that the output is
more structured. As a result, language, content, visual
and moral lesson of the stories should be rich of
details because can be a new thing for young learners.
2.3 Bilingual Language Learning
In selecting bilingual book criteria, translation needs
to be addressed carefully. For instance, the non-
English text should be at the same reading level as the
English text (Salas et al., 2002). In a study of bilingual
storybook (Chinese-English storybook), Huang and
Chen (2016) found that there seems to be common
issue that both languages tend to be in equivalent in
terms of translation quality. Meanwhile, it is claimed
that children’s literature should provide students
exposure to new, illustrated vocabulary in context,
and provide repetition of key words and phrases that
students can master and to provide a sense of
accomplishment.
3 METHODS
A validated Likert scale questionnaire is constructed
and distributed to gather data from 146 elementary
students from urban and rural area in West Java,
Indonesia. The questionnaire consisted of two
components: the first component was concerned with
the usefulness of English Language story reading
activity and the second component dealt with
character values and criteria of bilingual story book
for literacy reading activity. The results of the Likert
scale questionnaires were analyzed in two central
themes; perceptions on the practice of English
learning and storybook reading in the classroom and
perceptions on the criteria of the bilingual storybook
for language learning. Descriptive statistics were used
to describe the frequency counts and percentages of
the results. Meanwhile, the qualitative data from
interview result were preceded and transcribed
through a coding sheet.
4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The results of the questionnaire showed respondents’
perception toward the criteria of bilingual storybook
for learning. The data was presented in 10 items using
two point-likert scale ranging from 1 to 4, 1=strongly
agree, 2=agree, 3=disagree and 4=strongly disagree.
The language in this questionnaire had been
simplified due to the consideration of children level
in acquiring written form of language. RS refers to
rural area students and US refers to urban area
students.
Table 1: Perception on the character values and criteria of bilingual storybook for learning.
No
Statements
Mean
Strongly
Agree (%)
Agree (%)
Disagree
(%)
Strongly
Disagree (%)
RS
US
1
A storybook used in the classroom is written in
bilingual language, such as English and Bahasa
Indonesia.
1.72
1.84
31.51
60.27
6.16
2.05
2
The characters in the bilingual storybook are real
familiar character like a farmer, a grandfather, a school
student, etc.
1.56
1.93
36.99
52.05
8.22
2.74
3
The characters in the bilingual storybook are original,
not a manipulated characters taken from commercial
TV series or cartoon movies.
2.48
2.51
32.88
32.88
26.03
8.22
4
The bilingual storybook is written in brief stories.
1.88
2.27
16.44
24.66
51.37
7.53
5
The bilingual storybook covers a story about local
culture.
1.41
1.76
51.37
39.73
6.16
2.74
6
The bilingual storybook should be able to make
students learn about how to make friends everywhere.
1.58
1.66
47.95
43.84
6.16
2.05
7
The characters in the story are not gender biased, in
which female character is not only portrayed for
sweeping, washing dishes, doing laundry, etc.
1.95
2.02
29.45
50.68
10.96
8.90
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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With the mean value of 1.79, the Likert-scale
tended to range to scale 2, thereby the item 1
demonstrated that majority of respondents (60.27%)
agreed to the possible use of bilingual storybook in
the classroom with the focus on English and
Indonesian language. In terms of their interest in
using bilingual storybook in the classroom, there
likely to be similar preference between students of
rural area (1.72) and urban area (1.84). The results
showed how both groups tend to agree in several
items.
Around half of the population (52.05%) also
agreed when the storybook include real familiar
figures like a farmer, a grandfather, and a school
student. Both groups showed positive perceptions
toward this criterion as rural area students (1.56) tend
to agree and urban area students also agree on this
item (1.93). Regarding the result, the choice of the
character is closely related to the promotion of
multiculturalism awareness. It is also related to the
third item in which both groups agreed to the
development of original character in the story. With
approximately 26.03% students disagreed and 8.22%
strongly disagreed on having original characters,
there seemed to be a little preference of commercial
TV series. Based on a student who preferred having
popular TV series character, she admitted enjoying
popular TV series character into school lesson
because they were familiar for her. It is very contrast
to what Whiteside (2007) defines as subject culture
should be authentic and original.
“I can read half.. or I read only one chapter. I
usually choose it randomly, so I just read the
chapter that I love. There is no reading log [in
the classroom]. We usually summarize the
story in the book. The teacher usually asks us
to summarize [the reading] for ten minutes.”
(Translated interview with a female student of
an urban area school, April 15
th
, 2017).
From the whole items, the fourth criterion
received slightly different results. In this case,
students from rural area (1.88) prefer to the short
length of the storybook and urban area students also
tend to agree for the storybooks to be short (2.27). The
results in Table 1 proved that half of the total
respondents (51.37%) disagreed to the short length of
the stories in the bilingual storybook. In fact, a student
from urban area revealed how she intended to
randomly read stories in storybooks without
following the order of the content. In fact, the teacher
at the classroom tended to ask the students to
summarize the content as they read for ten minutes in
the morning. By considering the limited time, the
teacher expected that the student made it efficiently
for reading books instead of doing unnecessary thing.
The respondent also admitted that they also read their
textbook during the literacy time. As a result, there
was a possibility of the respondents being hardly
acquainted with the time consuming of reading the
books, hence they preferred to randomly read books
without considering whether they could finish
reading the book or the chapter in ten minutes.
“If the story is interesting, I will not get bored.
Just like the story of Anak Soleha. It teaches
us to be tough, and to help friend.” (Translated
interview with a female student of an rural
area school, April 18
th
, 2017).
Regarding character-based story, 44.52% of the
respondents agreed on the statement about “the
bilingual storybook should be able to make students
learn about introspection and self-reflection” and
34.25% strongly agreed on the point. It was revealed
in the interview that the respondent would be attached
to the story if it was interesting. For example, the
story of Anak Soleha (A Good Child) could help them
to learn to be a tough and helping person. So, they
found an attachment toward the continuation of the
story. Similarly, the respondent mentioned the
character of the story would give the reader a lesson.
The respondent admitted learning to realize personal
mistake from the story.
It was also strengthened by the items about
character values and cultural integration from the
sixth item to the tenth item. With 51.37% of them
strongly agreed on combining local culture aspects
into the stories, the range of the mean values 1.60
revealed that most of the students of the both groups
tend to agree to read any local culture theme in the
story. As shown in the table, there were 47.95%
positive responses who agreed on the value of social
interaction meanwhile, both of the groups also agreed
on the statement about learning self-introspection and
8
The bilingual storybook should be able to make
students learn about the importance of keeping the
environment.
1.33
1.63
58.22
36.99
1.37
3.42
9
The bilingual storybook should be able to make
students learn about introspection and self-reflection.
1.98
1.91
34.25
44.52
13.70
7.53
10
The bilingual storybook should be able to make
students learn about responsibility.
1.38
1.50
60.27
34.93
4.79
0.00
A Comparative Study of Rural and Urban Elementary School Students’ Perceptions of Criteria of Bilingual Children Storybook
287

self-reflection. As a result, providing culture and
character values are related to the themes of the story
and the design of the visual.
5 CONCLUSION
Based on the overview, it is revealed that there is no
any significant difference between the perceptions of
rural area students and urban area students towards
the criteria of bilingual storybook. If compared mean
score between the two groups in each item, most of
the results showed similar preferences. Regarding the
finding that was based on the result of data analysis
and interpretation of the data gained from
questionnaire and semi-structured interview, this
result increases our general understanding of quality
storybook for learning at school. Teachers should
give chances for literacy development in order to help
students become self-regulated.
Other criteria varied from visual and efficiency of
the bilingual storybook. The languages featured in the
story have to be equivalent in terms of portion and
translation. Being able to demonstrate the meaning of
target language into the native language or vice versa
is one of the interests of having bilingual storybook
for improving literacy. Based on the finding, student
believes that the bilingual languages will help them to
seek for vocabulary meaning; meanwhile illustration
gives hints to understand the plot. Besides, literacy
activity usually occurs for ten minutes in the morning,
the bilingual storybook have to provide adequate
story that students can read in the limited time. It can
be in the form of short story but the present finding
shows that students prefer to have a long story which
they can pick randomly. It will be great if several
episodic stories are compiled in one book, so they can
read one chapter efficiently and continue the story
when they have more free time. By considering the
limited time, the teachers also expected to guide
students effectively.
Regarding the finding that was based on the result
of data analysis and interpretation of the data gained
from questionnaire and semi-structured interview,
this result increases our general understanding of
quality storybook for learning at school. Teachers
should be more considerate in providing media for the
language learning and give chances for literacy in
order to help students become self-regulated.
Implications from this study enlighten the criteria on
how to select children’s books and to develop good
quality bilingual storybook in the future. In addition,
another study needs to be applied in a considerably
large context, in order to see thoroughly dynamic
integration of themes such as values of multicultural
awareness, gender equality, self-reflection inclusion,
social interaction example and responsibility
engagement. For those reasons, a thorough
investigation of the teacher’s perception, expert’s
perception and bilingual storybook model need to be
conducted to find out the orientation of meaningful
bilingual storybook production.
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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