The Use of Supplemental Trilingual English-Indonesian-Balinese E-books to Improve Elementary School Students’ English Productive Skills

Abstract

The Merdeka Curriculum provides an opportunity for elementary schools to teach English as an elective subject. However, based on the observations and interviews conducted, English lessons were taught by class teachers without formal education, so the learning outcomes were not optimal. In responding to the problems faced by teachers and students in the field, the research team provided a solution by developing trilingual English E-book teaching materials, wherein the English material had equivalents in both Indonesian and Balinese. Therefore, this study specifically analyzed the use of trilingual teaching materials to improve the productive skills of grade 1 elementary students. This research method uses a one group pre-test post-test design experimental approach. The subjects of this study were grade 1 elementary school students in Buleleng Regency. Data were collected using a speaking test to evaluate speaking and writing words through pictures as part of writing skills. The data obtained from the pretest and posttest results were analyzed using the Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) technique. The results of this study indicate that the use of supplementary trilingual English-Indonesian-Balinese e-books significantly improves the speaking and writing skills of grade 1 elementary school students. Overall, this study shows that the use of trilingual e-books has great potential for supporting students’ productive skills at elementary school level, especially mastering speaking and writing skills.