Stella Prancisca.
Cary Chappell Article received Article accepted Published Journal of English Language Teaching Innovations and Materials : 23rd June 2022 : 18th September 2022 : 4th October 2022 (Jelti.
Vol.
October Evaluation of bilingual book for English language learning Stella Prancisca1.
Cary Chappell2 1FKIP.
Universitas Tanjungpura.
Pontianak.
Indonesia stellaguru123@untan.
2English Language Program (ELP).
Kansas State University, the United States caryc@ksu.
DOI: http://dx.
org/10.
26418/jeltim.
Abstract This research develops a bilingual reading book that can benefit the studentsAo reading habits and English language skills.
It was developed using an R&D model, namely ADDIE .
nalysing, designing, developing, implementing, and evaluatin.
, focusing only on the last two stages.
The research aimed to evaluate the book by gathering usersAo perceptions before the book was launched publicly.
To evaluate the book, 37 university students were involved by reading the book as an out-of-class reading.
They were given a month to finish their reading.
Then, they needed to complete five randomized questions after reading each chapter and a series of questionnaires after reading a whole book.
Data from the quiz and the survey revealed positive results.
Most of the students achieved a high score on the quiz.
They also reported the suitability of the bookAos language and topics with their current English level.
Nonetheless, a few useful improvements were addressed related to image and layout.
Keywords: bilingual book.
extensive reading.
research and How to cite this paper: Prancisca.
, & Chappell.
Evaluation of bilingual book for English language learning.
Journal of English Language Teaching Innovations Materials (Jelti.
, 4.
DOI:
http://dx.
org/10.
26418/jeltim.
To link to this article: http://dx.
org/10.
26418/jeltim.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.
0 International License.
Journal of English Language Teaching Innovations and Materials (Jelti.
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Cary Chappell Several surveys reported that reading interest among Indonesian children was generally low .
OECD, 2.
For the English learning context.
Iftanti's .
research also indicates a low level of reading habits among the participants she There are several reasons why Indonesian children have a low reading interest level.
First.
Anandari and Iswandari .
argued that reading culture was not begun at the family level.
The results of their research show how the family plays a vital role as the first place to introduce reading habits to children.
When this role is not initiated at home, some children will perceive reading as a boring and unimportant activity.
After that.
Salikin.
Bin-Tahir.
Kusumaningputri, and Yuliandari .
argued that students often had limited reading resources outside the classroom.
Some participants even had just found English language texts for the first time when they were in school.
Salikin et al.
also reported that many participants complained about the small vocabulary size that they had mastered.
As a result, they found it challenging to understand reading at the sentence or text level.
This research intends to promote the enjoyment of reading English texts by designing a reading book that is easily accessible for undergraduate students.
The benefits are two folds.
It can initiate and maintain students' reading habits whereas supporting their English language skills.
To attract students' interest, this book is designed with a manageable language level.
It emphasizes the readerAos convenience in understanding the text rather than solely measuring the accuracy of the language use.
Further, this book is presented in two languages:
English and Indonesian.
Although the initial draft of the book has been made, it is imperative to test it out for potential book users.
This research evaluates how the book can help increase students' interest and reading ability while also observing which parts need improvement.
It tries to answer the research questions: .
AuWhat are the participantAos scores in the post-reading quiz?Ay and .
AuHow are the participantsAo responses to the bookAos language, content, and appearance?Ay Extensive Reading to Promote Reading Habit and English Language Many leading scholars claim that students' low level of interest in reading will have an impact on their English language skills.
For instance.
Renandya and Day .
believe that in the language learning process, the ability to communicate fluently is usually obtained through implicit knowledge, which is difficult or cannot be fully explained.
This is different from grammar which is considered explicit knowledge, where usually the teacher will explain grammar as a separate lesson in front of the class.
This sort of knowledge model will usually only help students analyze sentence structure, but they cannot use it in their daily communication lives.
Some research evidence shows that the implicit language acquisition process is more beneficial for students in using English for daily conversation.
For example.
Dressman.
Lee, and Sabaoui .
reported that Moroccan students who were proficient in English mostly acquired their language skills Journal of English Language Teaching Innovations and Materials (Jelti.
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Cary Chappell through browsing the internet or watching cable TV rather than formal classes.
Therefore.
Renandya and Day .
propose providing students with more access to implicit knowledge.
Usually, this can be achieved by the process of reading and listening extensively .
n large quantitie.
The extensive reading program was first introduced by Day and Bamford The extensive reading program emphasizes students' convenience in reading so that they feel comfortable reading for a long time.
Renandya and Day .
revealed that students who are accustomed to reading extensively would have a wider vocabulary and could acquire complex grammatical skills.
This vocabulary was obtained from the process of reading vocabulary repeatedly.
Once students read more books, they also have more opportunities to encounter the same words in different contexts.
Thus, when this is done repeatedly and continuously, students will begin to notice or be aware of it and then subconsciously store it in their vocabulary memory.
In addition to the benefits of improving vocabulary and the mastery of grammar, extensive reading programs have also been claimed to have an impact on other reading skills such as reading speed (He, 2.
, reading comprehension (Aka, 2.
, and even the other four basic language skills.
(Cho & Krashen 2.
For this reason.
Aka .
revealed that this program is the ideal way to overcome the limitations faced by students in meeting and communicating directly with native English speakers.
The Role of Bilingualism in Extensive Reading Program 10 principles must be considered when attempting an extensive reading program in the curriculum (See Day & Bamford, 1.
Of the ten basic principles, the first principle .
reading materials should be eas.
distinguishes extensive reading and other reading programs implemented in class.
In the extensive reading, students are encouraged to find books at or slightly beyond their English In this study, the author designs a book that is at a level appropriate to the potential readers.
One of the efforts is to present the reading books in two languages.
Indonesian and English.
Today, bilingual books are widely used to help children acquire a second language (Semingson.
Pole, & Tommerdahl 2015.
Zhang & Webb, 2.
Semingson.
Pole, and Tommerdahl .
reveal that bilingual books can help students learn new languages and cultures that may be different from their original ones.
They pointed out that several bilingual book formats are currently most widely used, ranging from full-text translation, singletext translation, embedded text, concept-bilingual books, and wordless books.
this study, the author specifically chose full-text translation because this format is the most popular.
After all, it provides the target foreign language text .
arget languag.
and its translation into the original language.
However.
Zhang and Webb .
suggest that book developers should be cautious when it comes to the arrangement of the target language and its Some of the common options are presenting the target language at Journal of English Language Teaching Innovations and Materials (Jelti.
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Cary Chappell first which is followed by the translation, or vice versa.
Their research shows that books written in the target language first and then followed by translations provide more effective results than other formats.
In addition to language structure, the preparation of bilingual books must also consider the translation quality.
A good book should avoid word-for-word translation as this will cause inaccuracies in the story's content and make the reader unable to naturally interpret and enjoy the story.
Recent research from Hidayati .
reports that some of the bilingual books have poor translation quality .
n Englis.
Many sentences are translated literally, so they sound AustiffAy.
In addition, the English-translated sentences are also arranged in a complicated way rather than in a simpler style.
Therefore, in the current study, the author focuses on this aspect so that the published book becomes easy to read, especially for English learners who are still at the beginner level.
METHOD
Research Design and Participants This research was a long-term research project where some parts of this research were undertaken in the previous year.
This research adopted the Research and Development (R&D) design with a bilingual book as the final ADDIE (Analysis.
Design.
Development.
Implementation, and Evaluatio.
was selected to guide the research and develop the book since it was claimed as the most frequently used model in R&D research (Aldoobie, 2.
Although ADDIE is typically employed for instructional designs such as classroom textbooks or learning media, this model was adopted in this project because the project is also aimed for language learning purposes, apart from its usage as out-of-class reading materials.
In addition, the analysis stage and evaluation stage in the ADDIE has greatly contributed to the development of this The research involved 37 students representing various majors and fields of study.
Approximately two-thirds of the participants came from the natural sciences programs, whereas the rest have social science and humanity 41% of the participants had a TOEFL Prediction score below the standard required by the university .
The rest had scores above the standard.
In particular, 8 of them got a fairly high score above 525.
Data Collection Data in this research were collected through several stages.
Stages 1-3 had been carried out in the previous year, consisting of analyzing the needs of potential users, designing the initial format, and developing the book (Prancisca.
The analysis stage resulted in several key findings that I used as the basis for designing the current book.
First, the analysis confirmed the low level of reading motivation among students.
The students mentioned several reasons, such as vocabulary difficulties, limited access to English reading books, unmotivated, and the book-length.
Furthermore, the analysis stage reported that most students never dealt with English reading books containing information about their local culture.
The analysis stage also resulted in the tourist Journal of English Language Teaching Innovations and Materials (Jelti.
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Cary Chappell destinations that would be included in the book.
Finally, they were asked about the types of book presentations.
The majority of the students stated that they preferred a bilingual book.
For that reason, the book was presented in two Having completed the prototype of the book this year, the research proceeded to Stages 4 and 5, where the book was released and distributed to real students as potential book users.
The fourth stage of the ADDIE model is called Implementation.
At this stage, the researcher should examine the would-be products on potential users in the intended context (Gunaydin & Karamete.
In this research, the book was distributed to research participants who were studying at the university level.
Each participant received a copy of the book to be read within one month.
Further, the data collection at the evaluation stage was divided into two parts.
First, every time the students completed one book chapter, they were given 5 randomized questions .
In addition, they needed to rate how much they liked the chapter.
This quiz was taken from a question bank to ensure that each participant did not receive exactly the same Although there is still debate regarding the use of quizzes in extensive reading programs, the authors agree with extensive reading experts .
Curtis.
Robb, 2.
who claim that giving quizzes after an extensive reading program is not entirely wrong.
The quiz serves to verify whether students have finished their reading and to ensure whether they really understand what they Also, quizzes can prevent students from reading books carelessly, for example, skimming the book like what they sometimes do in the reading log.
More recently.
Zhou and Day .
affirm that taking quizzes after reading can help their participants check their understanding and get immediate feedback.
The second data collection was carried out after students finished reading one whole book.
At this time, they were asked to fill out a questionnaire investigating their opinion of the book they read.
This questionnaire contained several questions adapted from Iswati .
Question items included the linguistic aspects of book content, post-reading activities .
, attitudes towards books, and book visualization.
To minimize physical contact during the COVID-19 pandemic, this questionnaire was made online.
Data Analysis The present research analyzed data from Stages 4 and 5.
The data were derived from the questionnaireAos responses.
These results were calculated quantitatively, focusing on the descriptive analysis in percentages (%).
After that, qualitative data were presented proportionally in the discussion section to enrich the explanation of the quantitative results.
Qualitative data were taken from two open-ended questions in the questionnaire.
The data were separated from quantitative calculations and coded according to the similarity of the participants' answers.
After the codes were obtained, the participants' answers were then grouped to support the quantitative findings.
This qualitative data Journal of English Language Teaching Innovations and Materials (Jelti.
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Cary Chappell were then included in the discussion section and cited verbatim .
ord-for-word according to the original sourc.
FINDINGS
Quiz Scores and Chapter Ratings This section aims to address the first research questions.
To do so, this research asked participants to read Pontianak City Highlights within one month.
Once the participants completed a book chapter, they were given five randomized questions taken from the question bank.
This research found that the participants in this study could complete the Pontianak City Highlights book quiz well.
This is indicated by the average score of participants from eight chapters in the book .
ee Appendix .
Chapter 1 obtained the highest score, with an average score of 93.
89 out of a maximum score of 100.
Meanwhile, the lowest score was in Chapter 4, despite a still relatively high score.
Participants also gave a good rating for each chapter they read.
Chapters 6 and 7 earned the best rating, 7 out of five points.
Only Chapter 2 and Chapter 4 scored below 4.
5, with 4 and 4.
2 points, respectively.
Book Evaluation (QuestionnaireAos Result.
Reading Duration Furthermore, this section attempts to answer research question 2.
Because this book was designed with the principle of extensive reading, the book should be made as easy and enjoyable as possible or at the level of the respondentsAo linguistic skills.
One measure to see how easy and enjoyable the books were by examining the duration they needed to finish one chapter and one book.
This research found that almost all participants .
%) could finish one chapter in less than one hour.
Only two people read more than one hour to complete a chapter .
ee appendi.
Meanwhile, if we look from a wider perspective, most of the participants finished reading Pontianak City Highlights in approximately one week .
%) to two weeks .
%), as provided in Table 5.
Interestingly, although they could have just finished reading in one day, only 8% of participants decided to do so.
The rest finished their reading in more than two weeks .
ee appendi.
Linguistic Evaluation Another aspect to consider when designing the Pontianak City Highlights book was the language level used in the book.
Participants were asked to give their opinion on the books by ticking the boxes AuStrongly Agree,Ay AuAgree,Ay AuDisagree,Ay or AuStrongly Disagree.
Ay Due to space limitation, the findings of this and subsequent sections are presented in percentage (%) only.
Three questions were given to evaluate whether the language used in this book was considered easy.
Almost all participants (>97%) strongly agreed or agreed that the language in the Pontianak City Highlights book was easy to understand (Q.
and in accordance with their current level of English (Q.
Journal of English Language Teaching Innovations and Materials (Jelti.
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Cary Chappell addition, they .
%) also asserted that the translation helped them understand the reading better (Q.
Content Evaluation Besides the difficulty level, another factor to consider is whether the book has an interesting topic or not.
This study then asked for responses from the participants regarding the topics presented in the book.
Not only must they be interesting, but the topics must also contain accurate and useful information.
The research reported that all participants agreed that the Pontianak City Highlights book contained accurate information (Q.
and was presented in an attractive style (Q.
They also considered that this book helped them explore tourist attractions around them (Q.
Most importantly, almost all participants .
%) agreed that it encouraged them to continue their good reading habits (Q.
Appearance Evaluation The final aspect to be evaluated from this book is related to the use of images and book layouts.
Basically, the research obtained a fairly good response from respondents, 81% for the image aspect and 70% for the layout, respectively.
However, if we look more closely, there were some participants who gave negative responses.
Unlike the previous two aspects, this negative number was quite large.
For example, nearly 20% of respondents disagreed that the pictures used in this book were interesting.
For the layout, almost a third of respondents even stated that the layout of the books used was not proportional.
The qualitative data obtained by the researcher will be presented in the next section to explore and explain this issue in more detail.
DISCUSSION
As argued earlier, this book was designed to help increase students' reading interest, especially in English-written texts.
Salikin.
Bin-Tahir.
Kusumaningputri, and Yuliandari .
emphasize that the difficulty of accessing English reading books makes reading habits among Indonesian students lower.
For this reason, the book Pontianak City Highlights offers an English-language book that is freely and easily accessible by students, at least in the place where this research was conducted.
This book was designed with the principles of extensive reading and Therefore, this book was made at a level that fits the profile of students' English skills in the context of this research .
ee Chapter .
To see if the book was appropriate for the students' level, respondents were asked to take a quiz after they read the book in each chapter.
However, it should be noted that earlier scholars suggest that ER practitioners must consider the quiz level of A study by Campbell and Weatherford .
, for instance, revealed that their participants negatively commented on the difficulty level of quizzes in their study.
Consequently, they claimed that their participants slightly preferred to use a reading report rather than a post-quiz as the assessment method.
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Cary Chappell As a response, this research tried to adjust the quiz difficulty based on the participantAos language profile.
In addition, all students were informed that they would take a quiz after reading each chapter to prevent some students from skimming the reading quickly or not reading at all.
As a result, most of the students obtained very satisfactory scores.
As a whole class, the respondentAos success score was almost 90%.
In addition, the respondents also rated this book nicely by giving it a 4.
5 rating, which meant it was almost perfect.
According to Robb .
, the quiz given at the end of the reading was used to check whether the students/respondents really understood what they read.
In addition, quizzes could be used to motivate students and control their reading levels.
It is not surprising that students in CurtisAo .
study preferred taking a quiz rather than doing a book report, which is described as Autedious and time-consumingAy .
Therefore, the presence of the quiz after reading should not be debated as long as the questions are set at a simple and easy level.
The high scores and ratings indicated by participants in this research mean that they take the book seriously and not carelessly.
Another method to determine whether the book was designed according to the participantsAo level was based on the reading duration.
Respondents were asked to state how long they spent completing one chapter and one book as a The results of the study found that almost all respondents were able to complete one chapter of the Pontianak City Highlights book in less than one hour.
They could finish the book with a fairly normal duration, not too long.
Interestingly, we can assume they could have finished this book in one day.
However, the participants in this context choose to postpone and finish their reading within 1-2 weeks.
One of the possible reasons is that completing a fairly thick book in one day is quite daunting.
Therefore, they choose to read little by In other words, they prioritized the convenience principle over completing reading targets quickly.
In addition to the duration, the respondents were also asked for their opinion regarding the use of language in this book.
For this aspect, almost all respondents agreed that the language used in this book was easy and appropriate to their level.
Furthermore, the nuance of local topics presented in this book helped them more easily predict the meaning of a word when they encountered difficult vocabulary.
One respondent said.
Au(I lik.
new vocabulary that I can find here.
Some words are sometimes difficult for us to find the meaning, .
because the book is locally based, .
he meanin.
can be predicted hereAAy (R.
If the participants still could not understand certain words, they were assisted by the Indonesian translation.
In fact, such a bilingual form has been widely used in several countries to help students master a second language (Semingson.
Pole, & Tommerdahl, 2.
Because the participants perceive the translation as a useful aid, it can be inferred that the quality of the translation is good enough to help the participants comprehend the text.
Hidayati .
found Journal of English Language Teaching Innovations and Materials (Jelti.
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Cary Chappell that many bilingual books available were translated so poorly that it prevented the readers from understanding the meaning.
Thus, the translation quality plays a crucial role in this book.
This research also reported positive results on the selection of book topics.
The Pontianak City Highlights book was designed to introduce tourist attractions where the participants lived.
Most of them agreed that this book provided complete, accurate, and interesting information on tourist destinations.
The participants admitted that the topic was interesting and useful for introducing matters that they might not have known until now.
Some participants even specifically pointed to their favourite parts, such as the story or history of the tourist attraction in the book.
Here are some thoughts from the participants about what they liked about this book:
"The strength of this book was the content of the chapters, especially the history" (R.
"First, the information presented is difficult to find from anywhere.
So, it attracts the interest of the reader .
The author can make the reader interested in the place even though they have been there, because the message conveyed is very positive and constructive for tourism" (R.
Because this book has interesting topics, most participants admitted that the book Pontianak City Highlights encouraged them to continue this reading habit in the future.
This is certainly very positive because this book can trigger the participants to continue this positive habit and consider this activity as something fun.
Although this book looks promising, it needs some improvement in a few The most crucial part is regarding the arrangement of the bookAos images and layout.
Although many respondents liked the selection of layout images, some others viewed it negatively.
The numbers were large enough to become worthy of concern.
Nearly a third of participants rated the need for improvement in the use of images and text.
Basically, participants thought that the photos presented were still interesting.
However, some pictures were placed together with the text, making it difficult for the readers.
Additionally, some paragraphs were too tight, covered in the background, and overlapped with the image.
Following are the comments from the participants:
"The layout of the book because there are some words that are covered by the background.
So it's a bit difficult to read" (R.
"Perhaps, the arrangement of the text is not too close so that those who read it are not bored and will be happy to read it again and again" (R.
Unfortunately, the participants did not mention in detail within which part or page they found the image that needed to be corrected.
In fact, this information would help the researcher follow up on their comments more quickly and accurately.
However, still, the inputs from these participants helped Journal of English Language Teaching Innovations and Materials (Jelti.
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Cary Chappell the writer pay attention to the aspects of using images, text, and colors in the ParticipantsAo messages reinforce the statement conveyed by Gunaydin and Karamete .
that the visual appearance of the product should consider eye comfort for the user.
Thus, this input is useful for book improvement.
For the sake of the readerAos convenience, this book was then revised according to the participantAos comments.
First, the fonts used in this book were raised to loosen the distance between sentencesAo lines so as to ensure clarity.
Some images were also repositioned to avoid overlapping with words in the As this editing process resulted in extra pages, the book was also divided into two separate books.
The first book contained Chapters 1 Ae 4, while the second book consisted of Chapters 5 Ae 8.
The revised book also contained ten post-reading questions that readers could use to check their understanding.
In addition, considering the extent of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic at the time this research was conducted, this book was made in two versions.
The first version was a printed book version, and the second was a format that has been digitized into a protected pdf file.
The aim was to make it easy for readers to access this book from home without having to visit the library.
CONCLUSION
This research has designed a reading product, entitled Pontianak City Highlights, which hopefully encourages students to obtain English reading materials more easily.
Using the ADDIE research and development framework, this research has come to the implementation and evaluation stages.
It attempts to examine the bookAos level of difficulty and how much they like the book by looking at the studentsAo scores and the book ratings.
Additionally, it explores how the students respond to the booksAo language, content, and layout.
After the prototype of the book was distributed to be read by students for one month.
Stage 4 began by asking students to do a quiz and some questions in a questionnaire.
Overall, their quiz results were fairly good.
They also gave an excellent rating, indicating that they liked the book.
In Stage 5.
The participants also agreed that the language used in this book was easy and appropriate to their Moreover, the accompanying translation made it easier for them to understand the reading.
The topics used in this book were also interesting because they were related to the participantAos daily life.
They most liked the historical features presented in each chapter because these made them recognize the history of the buildings they had visited.
One aspect that needs to be improved from this book, however, was related to the pictures and the layout of the book.
The researcher believes that these inputs are very useful for the bookAos future improvement.
The revised product of this development research was made according to the input submitted by the participants.
For further research, the researcher recommends involving more participants so that the results can be generalized.
In addition, further research should also involve interview data collection Journal of English Language Teaching Innovations and Materials (Jelti.
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Cary Chappell techniques in order to follow up on answers from participants that are difficult to cover in open-ended questionnaires.
REFERENCES