Digitized Local Folklores in EFL Reading Classroom

— This study aimed at reporting the implementation of the use of digitized local folklores to empower reading comprehension skills of junior high school students. This classroom action study was applied to a number of grade VII junior high school students. It engaged two stories about Palembang City - the Origin of Musi River and the History of Ikan Belido ( Chitala Lopis ). Both stories were “packaged” digitally by the use of video, and extended with guided ICT based post-reading activities. Video as one medium of the learning activities could confidently intensify students’ interest in learning due to the fact that most students tend to be more visualized. The result revealed that the use of this digitized media positively enhanced the students on the extent of the pleasure, imaginative visual learning aids, and the involvement and touched upon cultural aspects of the students.


I. INTRODUCTION
The 21 st century is known as the era of globalization. Its existence has induced the huge changes in "social, economic, and cultural ways" [5]. Somehow, something positives and negatives might rise concurrently. To gain the positives, people ought to become wiser, smarter, more creative, and open minded, where those might be acquired naturallyfrom birthor some come up by trainings. Since then, people altogether confide education as the role maker in academic knowledge and characters. It simply expresses the people's reliance on education which have significant roles in shaping young people's characters by main curriculum and co-curricular activities at schools [3].
When curricula come first to discuss on the academic knowledge, the old problem might rise -the assumption that school subjects are tedious. It is aggravated by the students' contentions that some subjects are harder than the others; they will revel to the ones and vilify the others by defenses. The subject teachers, somehow, cannot take it for granted. This excess should be taken into account and reflected to find the solutions. One way is by giving the students' meaningful learning experiences [4].
The fruitful experiences of learning are encountered in different aspects: students, teachers, materials, instructional media, and teaching methods and techniques; the students by their teachers' pedagogical skills get meaningful materials delivered with appropriate instructional media in purposeful teaching methods and techniques. The materials should be designed as authentic and contextual as possible [6]. Authenticity and contextualization of the materials can be among others strived for the collaborative learning. On the other hand, instructional media and learning aids are supposed to be attractive and typical based on the subject and learners' characteristics.
English among other subjects is still presumed as one of the hardest subjects for the students widely [3]. Its existence in the curriculum also grapples with the challenges due to the fact that it is not the first language of Indonesian learners. English becomes compulsory on the level of junior high for a certain set of learning goals. DEPDIKNAS explains the areas of learning English in senior high school as follows: • Language Competencelanguage competence involves language skills, i.e. listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
• Sub Competencesub competence involves the factional competence, linguistic competence, socio-cultural competence, strategic competence and textual competence.
• Development of positive attitude in understanding English as a means of communication To gain the successful performances on those areas, all learning aspects should be facilitated and optimized. One of attempts is by admitting the clout of the globalization which brings the students as the digital natives. Digitalization has brought the students so easy information access that might directly or indirectly influence on the students' learning behavior. At the time information is everywherecoming from internet, education should take advantage of it and realize that standing at cross purposes will even issue more harms. One of all is by doing something beyond knowledge and shifting the instructional focuses from the knowledge transfer to the character building. This might give benefits for the catholic schools in all level on the core values instillations. By this research, the educational goals are not seized in terms of the knowledge development and skills performance but also characters empowerment. The media implemented were the digitized local folklores by involving SI UNYIL as the characters as in [1]. Si Unyil was chosen as it represents the famous figure of cartoon famous from Indonesia. Even it is palpably not the native cartoonish figure from Palembang, Si Unyil brings atmosphere of Indonesian culture representatives not only for Indonesia in general, but also for Palembang students in specific. The characters in Si Unyil story perform their own distinctive characters, so the students get more familiar towards this typical figure from Indonesia. There were two main concerns of the research: 1) The extent to which ICT-based SI UNYIL enhanced the narrative reading of the students 2) The students' responses on the implementation of the digitized local folklores on the students' reading achivements.

A. CAR (Classroom Action Research)
The Classroom Action Research (CAR) by Kemis and Taggart was used as the research design. There were two cycles for minimum to implement in the research. Each cycle comprise four phases namely planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting [7]. The independent variable of the research was ICT-based SI UNYIL, while the dependent variable was the narrative reading comprehension of the students. Based on the phases of CAR, the first phase is planning. Before the implementation of the media, there were some preparations to accomplish in every cycle, such as designing the lesson plans, designing tests and doing test's validity and reliability, preparing the evaluation and observation instruments, and ensuring the equipment used in teaching.
Action or implementation comes after the planning. On this phase, the teaching was held. As it was CAR, the classroom teacher is the one teaching the class and using the media. During and after the implementation, the observations were conducted by the researcher. Three elements being observed covered teacher's classroom management, student's class performance, and the reading comprehension after the lesson. The last phasereflectionwas conducted to evaluate what went good and what needed improvements on the cycle.

B. Research Subject
The subject of the research was the 7 th grade students of Xaverius 6 Junior High School Palembang.

C. Instruments
The instruments used to gather the information were the instructional media, observations sheets, tests sheets, and questionnaire sheets. The instructional media was the ICTbased SI UNYIL. The observations and test sheets were used in order to consider the students' narrative reading comprehension. Questionnaire was purposely to find out the students' responses towards the implementation.

D. Data Analysis
Percentage and scoring rubric were used to analyze the data. Paired sample t-Test was also used to find out the significant improvement on the reading performance of the students.

E. Validity and Reliability
Since the teaching video and test instrument were selfdesigned, the validity and reliability were required. By the results of the tests, some improvements were given towards the video and the test instrument. On the video, the speed speech was readjusted to get the students easily follow the plot. The questions formats were also revised due to the validity and reliability test results and suggestions from the class teacher.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Results 1) Cycle I: This cycle was done in two meetings with 80 minutes for each meeting.
a) Planning : The first story was the STORY OF IKAN BELIDO. This story was choosen since Belido has become the icon of Palembang City. The test design was also validated on this phase, so it could be used in the research. In the first meeting, the students watched the video. There were some activities the students did before and after the video display. Pre-activities covered some questions to raise the students'attention and motivation. Some vocabulary, or common words in the story, by worsheets should also be distributed to the students, so they would help the students to understand the plots. Activities after the videopost activitieswere designed to get the students' responses towards the videos. Replaying the video might be needed in these post activities. It depended on the students' need and willingness. In the second meeting, the students did the same post-reading activities and did a test. c) Observing: The observations included the teacher, students' class performance, and reading achivements. From the teacher components, the aspects observed in the teacher component were mastery of the material, systematic presentation, application of methods, use of ICT media, performance, and motivation. Through indicators in every aspect, the results showed very good in the aspects of applying methods and performance with a score of 100%. While 93% is in other aspects. The total average percentage of achievement was 94%. The first thing to be improved was the mastery of teacher in using instructional media. A better mastery of media would help the students receive material better. In addition, the ability of the teacher to relate material to the realities of life also needed to be emphasized. This could bring them to the actualization of the material with what was faced in the students' everyday life. In the students component, there were four aspects being assessed, namely the students' reading performance and comprehension. The classroom reading performances were observed to find out the effectiveness of the media implementation. While the reading comprehesion by the reading tests was seen to measure the students' comprehension towards the reading materials. Assignments also show good performance, by 93% of the target. Meanwhile, the activeness and attention of students still needed some improvement by score 63% and 75%. The total average was 82%. From these results, it was obvious that some improvement was needed. The activeness of students in asking questions and generating ideas could be improved through more relevant questions related to the material that would be given. Students' enthusiasm also needed to be a particular concern in the next cycle. This could be provoked through relevant activities, such as providing rewards and the like. The final component was the assessment of learning outcomes conducted through summative tests. The following is the results of student learning in the first cycle and the student completeness results with the measurement of minimum completeness criteria (KKM) was 70. d) Reflecting: In this first cycle, there were some things going very well. Teachers who governed the class well became a source of success from this cycle. Good results aslo became evidence that the media provided could be accepted by the students. The initial fear related to competencies that were not in line with the semester could finally be alleviated. There were still a number of things to be improved. The first of all was to bring the students to the actualization of the materials with the students' real life. Narrative topics that revolved around the wisdom of the city of Palembang should be emphasized even more. In addition, the operation of the video had also to be more authorized by the teacher, so the thorough preparation must be done.
2) Cycle II: The second cycle was done in one meeting. a) Planning: In the second cycle, the material given was different from the material in the first cycle. The story Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research,volume 394 was still about the local wisdom of the city of Palembang, but it was not common and well-known among the students, even people in Palembang like the history of Pulau Kemaro. This was expected to help the students in Palembang to know more about the culture of the City of Pelembang itself. The story was the Origin Name of River Musi. The components of the questions in this cycle were slightly different from the previous ones. By continuing to use the same format or form of questions, the questions in this cycle were not equipped with Indonesian translations, so the students learned more in understanding the contents of English questions. With the good results of the questions in the previous cycle, students were also expected to get meaningful experiences and finally be able to gain more success. Besides, other instruments were also well prepared, such as observation sheets and other supporting equipments. The loudspeaker and LCD projector were also certain to function properly. Teacher readiness in using the media and mastering teaching materials was also enhanced. b) Implementing: Since the second cycle was carried out in one meeting, the students viewed the video on YouTube, so they could understand the subject matter before the learning session began. During the class session, they were upgraded again to the video that had been seen by linking it to the material in Mathematics. Thus, they increasingly understood the relationship between teaching material in English lessons with teaching materials in Mathematics. After the initial activity session, they looked back at the video. Some guiding questions were also delivered to help them better understand the reading content. Then they got a question sheet. From these questions, they were given time to work with help again with reading texts in English to ensure they did not forget the contents of the text. This was also in line with the focus of research: reading, and not listening skills. c) Observing: From the teacher component, the teacher was very good at explaining the materials, answering questions, guiding discussions, and providing relevant examples. Media mastery was very good as well. Related to pedagogical ability, the teacher was already good at mastering the class. The percentage of teacher performance score is 97%. By the students' classroom performance, the percentage of the students' performance is 95%. They showed activeness, attention, discipline, and good performance in this cycle. Things which did not show up were the students' initiative and enthusiasm in expressing ideas. Somehow, at least two students were found less motivated to participate in learning. This could be due to their lack of interest in learning by using audio visual. From component of reading achievement, cycle 2 brought a significant change in increasing the number of the students got score above 70. 9 students (35%) of the total participants got very good grades, 90-100. 12 students (46%) received grades between 80-89. Meanwhile, 5 students (19%) from the total participants got scores between 70 -79. All participants also completed learning achievements with no students belonged the criteria under the KKM. d) Reflecting: By the results of observations on three components, namely the teacher, students, and learning outcomes, an overview was obtained, although in reality the results in cycle 1 were already satisfying. The improvement in cycle 2 could be caused by the readiness of the teacher in using the media. In addition, the students were also assissted in understanding the teaching materials through learning contexts built through the meaningful questions in the initial learning activities. This became the key to successful learning.

B. Discussion
1) Observation and Reflections: The percentage of observations on each component is presented in the diagram 4. There was 4% increases in the teacher component. This was in line with the preparations made. In the student component, change was found to be very meaningful. It might be caused by the readiness of the students to take lessons very well. While from the learning outcomes component, 2% improvement had shown good results and there was a change in cycle 2. 2) Reading Performance and Questionnaire Results: Although the increase in the percentage of completeness was achieved, there were some students who experienced a decrease in performance in cycle 2. Diagram 6 shows the compared score in cycle 1 and cycle 2. It showed 9 students who experienced grades down in cycle 2 that could describe there were still students who experienced obstacles in understanding the material and questions. This was due to the absence of Indonesian translation on the questions in cycle 2. It led the students not to accept the material given. From the questionnaire, it was found that 77.27% of the students said the media in the form of ICT-based Si Unyil stories was useful to improve the reading comprehension. Besides, the media encouraged 86.36% of all students to get to know the material better. The media also received positive responses in making the students more active in learning English (81.81%). In addition, 79% of students agreed that learning narrative by using ICT-based Si Unyil stories made them not feel bored. The media also helped them in exercising imagination (68%). The media made the majority of the students (69%) more familiar with Indonesian stories.

3) Previous Related Studies and Statistical Results:
The use of ICT as a learning tool was not something strange to the students in today's school. The novelty on the learning media in this research was Si Unyil's character which was packaged in ICT. The material which was usually by texts and books was now-on packaged through a slightly different medium. This made the students more interested in receiving the materials, especially when lessons were given in subjects that were known to be difficult [5]. This change had several noteasy consequences, especially for the subject teacher. The teacher had to increasingly understand the character of the media used. The operation of the media also needed to be well understood. The teacher's pedagogical ability in the classroom was another thing also very influential on the achievement of learning goals. However, good results in both cycles were not in line with a significant increase in learning outcomes. The average score of 83 in cycle 1 did not impact on a significant change in cycle 2 -85. This was indicated by the results of Paired Sample T-Test using SPSS (Table 5).

IV. CONCLUSION
This CAR was held as the innovation and novelty from the media and ways of learning at schools. Media with ICT with Si Unyil's character are able to attract the attention of grade 7 students in the learning process. This was comparable with the learning outcomes from both cycles. In cycle 1, 85% of all participants performed well by exceeding the KKM scores that had been set. This was reinforced in cycle 2 with a percentage that exceeded the KKM by 100%. The questionnaire results supported the reading achievements. The use of this digitized media positively enhance the students on the extent of the pleasure, imaginative visual learning aids, and the involvement and touched upon cultural aspects of the students. The suggestions might go to the further research on different aspects or segments of reading, such as syntax.