Children Books as a Means to Bridge Local Culture and Language Learning: A Project Report

Abstract

Children books have always been a great way to stimulate children's learning process, especially learning a foreign language. Through books, young learners are exposed to words and culture of the language itself. However, it is often difficult to explain the concept of foreign culture to these kids especially if the parents/teachers themselves are not familiar with it. Responding to the problem, during the Semester Antara, May - July 2011, the author made Audio Visual Aids Workshops for students of the English Department of Satya Wacana Christian University. In these workshops students learnt how to make children books and made them as a final project. There were four groups who made children books. These books tell stories from local culture, such as the origin of Javanese alphabet (aksara Jawa), in English. These books are aimed as a means to promote English language learning through the culture that is more common to parents/teachers. This paper will elaborate on the steps students took till the final result they created, and the benefits of this activity