Developing Song-Based Listening Materials for Grade A Students of Kindergarten

Abstract

The objective of this study was to develop song-based listening materials for grade A students of kindergarten. Specifically, it aimed at: 1) finding out the target needs of group A students to learn English, 2) finding out the learning needs of grade A students to acquire English based on nursery songs, and 3) describing the appropriate song-based English listening materials to make students enjoy learning English. This study belongs to Research and Development (R&D). The subjects of this study were the A graders of kindergarten at TK Negeri 1 Sleman. This study adapted the materials development procedure from Jolly and Bolitho in Tomlinson (1998). The steps of this study consisted of identifying the needs analysis, developing the course grid, developing the first draft of materials, evaluating materials, and writing the final draft materials. There were two types of questionnaires and one interview guideline used to collect the data. The first questionnaire and interview guideline were made for collecting data in needs analysis while the second questionnaire was made for collecting the data about the appropriateness of the materials through the expert judgment. The data was analyzed through descriptive statistics. The results of the research showed that the children needed to learn English in order to be able to say some vocabularies and simple sentences from the topics provided, to develop their awareness towards a foreign language and to prepare the next school comprehension level. This research was developed teachers’ and students’ book in three units entitled “Parts of the Body”, “Foods and Beverages”, and “Farm Animals”. Each topic had a song to be the main text of vocabularies and activities. The books had 6 to 8 tasks to be completed by the teachers and students. The developed activity was combined with TPR. The books were completed with CD consisting of songs, posters and flashcards. The main score of all aspects of the three developed units, in the scales of 1-4, was 3.35 that can be categorized as “Very Good”.

Keywords: kindergarten, children, listening, song