The Influence of Hello Book Media on Early Childhood Language Skills

Children who have difficulty expressing their wants and needs are more likely to be helped and fail to gain independence. Providing stimulation to foster communication skills starting from an early age through play and media activities. This study aims to analyze the effect of the Hello Book media on early childhood language skills. This type of research is a Quasi Experiment (quasiexperiment). The population in this study were students of group B of two Kindergarten Institutions. The data collection technique uses observation to determine the level of development of language skills. The hypothesis test used is the Independent t-test parametric statistical test. According to the calculation results obtained t = -4,303 with a sig value. = 0.0001. The difference in the mean value between the experimental group and the control group was 2,150. Thus, it can be concluded that the use of Hello Book media in learning has a positive and significant effect on children's language skills in


Introduction
Language is an aspect of human abilities since birth, language skills are divided into 4 (four), namely listening, reading, speaking, writing. Language development in children is very important because it becomes the basis for mastering other abilities. Language is the main form of expressing thoughts and knowledge when children communicate with others (Rahmawati et al., 2019;Safitri et al., 2019). Language is an important tool in the life of every individual. Because language is a means by which humans express their feelings, thoughts, ideas, and aspirations (Obiweluozo & Melefa, 2014). Language is all forms of communication where a person's thoughts and feelings are symbolized, so that what is meant can be conveyed to others. Therefore, language development starts from the first cry until the child is able to speak words. Language is a communication tool that is very important for a child's life in conveying what is on his mind and for understanding the thoughts and feelings of those around him (Alawiyah, et al., 2018). Every individual who wants to express his ideas and ideas needs to develop expressive language, especially spoken language. A child needs a way that is in accordance with the level of development by paying attention to factors that affect the child's personality (Suwartiningsih et al., 2018).
Carool dan Barbara (Aprinawati, 2017) states that the language skills (speaking) of early childhood will grow and develop rapidly in terms of vocabulary, reaching 8000 words, the length and structure of the sentences are increasingly complex so that children need to be given a stimulus to hone them. Early childhood is when the main task of learning to speak is developing, namely adding words, mastering words, and combining words into a sentence, which at first the child's speech is still egocentric, then towards the end of childhood -children start interviews that are more social in nature usually start talking about something that is around them (Hurlock, 1980). At this time, children have a strong desire to learn spoken language. This is because first, spoken language is the main means of socializing. Children who are able to communicate well will find it easier to make social contacts and are easier to accept as members of peer groups. Second, learning spoken language is a means to gain independence. Children who cannot express their wants and needs or who cannot try to be understood by others tend to be treated to constant assistance and fail to gain the desired independence. This is also reinforced by research results Bonamy dan Leonard (Manurung, 2019) who say that children who have less competence in communication of certain ways which is not proper with the context tends to have social skill problems. This can couse children will be difficult to interact with people's surround them which make children become quite children speaking skill will not growt optimally. From the research results that have been discussed above, it can be known that speaking skill is very important role in improving potentials in children. According to Sonawat and Francis in (Dhieni & Muis, 2012) language development of children aged 4-6 years is as follows: (1) the child begins to tell simple stories you have long convertations, (2) the child's speech is understood by other most of the time, (3) the child follows 3 step or more complex direction, (4) the child can pronounce most the sounds, but he may not say "r", "s" or "the" sounds correctly, (5) the child begins to use adult grammar in his sentences, and (6) the child can understand 1500 to 2500 words by 5 years.
At the age range of 5-6 years, children begin to enter pre-primary school, which is a period of readiness to enter formal education, so that when children are given stimuli about things around them, the responses given are also of high quality due to the high potential for learning. Children have a different way of acting from adults, which prioritizes process over results. Children ignore the results, but undergo a fun adventure process because children have an active character, curiosity, imagination, and high enthusiasm (Dista, 2019). Through early childhood education, children are given learning activities that are implemented into play activities that aim to maximize all aspects of children's intelligence (Handayani, 2018). One form of intelligence is language ability. Each child has a different language ability capacity. Children can use language based on language acquisition in the family and in the surrounding environment (Maulita et al., 2018).
Then the function of developing language skills for Kindergarten children based on the Ministry of Education in (Suciati, 2017) includes: a. means of communicating with the environment; b. tools to develop intellectual abilities; c. tools to develop children's expressions; d. tools to express feelings and thoughts to others. Then as for the scope of the development of early childhood language skills according to Regulation of the Minister of Education and Culture of Indonesia No. 137 of 2014 in the National Standards for Early Childhood Education, among others: Following several orders at once; Use and be able to answer the questions what, why, where, how much, and so on; Tells about the events around him in a simple manner; Retelling the contents of a simple story that has been told by the teacher; Provide information about something; Sort and tell the contents of the series pictures; Complete simple sentences that have been started by the teacher; Continuing the story / poem that the teacher started; State the many uses of an object; Tells the picture that has been provided; Tells stories about self-made drawings; Express yourself through dramatizations; and use the pronoun me or me. The stages of developing language skills can be achieved through providing stimuli, one of which can be through storytelling and roleplaying activities, learning media and learning videos. It takes the awareness of parents, educators and the community to understand the nature of early childhood and the development of appropriate language skills, so that there is no malpractice in developing language skills in the implementation of Early Childhood Education.
The findings of preliminary observations made by researchers in several Kindergartens in Nganjuk Regency: 1) Nearly 70% of teachers carry out language learning activities in kindergarten that do not match the characteristics of early childhood; 2) There are many demands from the parents of students so that their children have fluent language skills in preparation for the elementary school entrance tests; 3) Language learning in kindergarten tends not to use media and fun playing methods but instead uses conventional methods, namely "paper and pencil". This is reinforced by the explanation (Dhieni & Muis, 2012) which is based on the results of a survey using a questionnaire on 100 kindergarten teachers who took PLPG, explaining that the level of understanding of kindergarten teachers towards the language skills of children aged 4-6 years is still very low. Another fact was revealed (Safitri et al., 2019) in their research, namely that in learning the teacher only provides language learning to children by simply writing a few words on the blackboard and the teacher points to the letters one by one so that the child is asked to read them. Then Sukiman in (Aulina, 2012) also explained that currently there are many learning practices in early childhood education, in order to pursue calistung skills, teachers apply memorization techniques that are not directly related to children's daily lives. The interests of children can be overcome by scholastic tasks for which they have not yet acquired it.
The teaching and learning process cannot be separated from learning tools, one of which is learning media. Learning media is a tool to support all activities needed when studying Arsyad in (Juniarti, 2019). Learning strategies for early childhood are very important to involve learning activities and media that are packaged in play activities to attract children's attention. This is in line with the opinion (Safitri et al., 2019) which states that teachers should make strategies, fun media so that children in learning activities will get innovative learning models. Learning media can provide a visual image to facilitate the learning process of children who are in the preoperational thinking phase, which is the stage where language use begins to develop (Santrock, 2002). According to Heinich in (Zaman, 2014), media comes from Latin and is the plural form of the word "medium" which literally means intermediary, namely an intermediary between the source of the message and the recipient of the message. The use of instructional media is one of the many effective learning strategies for children. There are many types and forms of media, from the simplest to the most technologically advanced Mahnun in (Ulfah et al., 2019). Given that children at an early age can be more effective if they learn in a holistic way and relate to their lives, it is better if the material presented in learning is related to the characteristics of the child. Such as learning that is in accordance with the child's life (concrete), inviting children's curiosity, and using attractive and colorful play activities (Nurhayati, 2018).
There are still many educators today who think that the role of the media in the learning process is only limited as a tool and can be ignored if the media is not available in Early Childhood Education institutions. The effectiveness of the learning process, especially in Early Childhood Education, includes communication between the message source (educators) and the message recipient (students) with the help of learning media. The values of instructional media include: 1) Making abstract concepts concrete; 2) Presenting objects that cannot be presented in the class; 3) Displays objects that are too large; 4) Shows movement that is too fast / slow. Things that need to be considered in the use of lerning media are: The use of learning media is not an additional function but has a function as a tool in realizing a more effective learning situation, learning media is also interconnected with other components in creating the expected learning objectives, the use of learning media must be relevant to the objectives and content of learning, Learning media is also for make it easier for students to capture the objectives and teaching materials to be conveyed, learning media also functions in improving student learning outcomes and learning media to lay concrete foundations in thinking and reduce verbalism Playing is a very effective activity to stimulate early childhood development. A game that is designed with good planning for learning purposes and focuses on playing activities on one aspect of child development will be very effective in stimulating the development of children's abilities (Hewi, 2020). Play activities in early childhood education should be integrated into learning activities. By playing, children will get direct learning experiences and make learning more meaningful. It is believed by most experts that a happy childhood is the basis for future success and vice versa (Gustina & Khadijah, 2020). In order to solve the above problems, the writer tries to use a learning media called Hello Book to see whether there is a positive and significant influence on early childhood language skills. Media Hello Book presents visual story books with children's pictures combined with flannel in certain parts, with cheerful colors to attract children's attention. This media also provides learning activities that are able to train children's imagination, thinking, language as well as sensorymotor coordination. According to (Sulistiowati et al., 2018) that learning media images and picture books need to be developed to support the learning process, books with games help students in developing cognitive skills, language and social skills and to love literacy. (Ratnasari & Zubaidah, 2019) describe their findings which show a positive and significant influence from the use of pictorial story media. Where class A was given treatment using picture book media, their speaking ability was more improved than class B who's learning only used conventional methods. Similar research was also conducted by (Reed et al., 2015) which argued that using picture story books can be more effective than story books that contain only text. The results of further research are as done by (Mol et al., 2009) stated that the use of interactive story books can improve a child's speaking ability, because in addition to the quality of the book, the frequency of use of storybook media is important in early childhood learning.
The use of the Hello Book media starts from the teacher doing storytelling activities to children using the Hello Book media first then when the process of telling stories occasionally the teacher asks the child questions and also lures the child to ask the teacher, then the child is invited to retell the story in the Hello Book media in sequence and in your own language. Finally, the teacher provides reinforcement at the end of the activity. The concept of learning in using the Hello Book media is in line with the concept of PEER (Promt, Evaluate, Expand and Repeat) developed by (Permanik, 2017) starting from Promt where the initiation by the teacher to ask questions about various things related to stories / fairy tales, starting from questions and answers related to books, book covers, pages, stories, to things that intersect with stories. Evaluate is an activity to evaluate children. The extent to which he listens to the teacher, the teacher can observe the answers to the questions asked. Questions can be about the characters in the story, where the incident occurred or other questions related to the story. Expand is the development of words or ideas. Where the teacher will observe every word development and listen to the child, through the answers given by the child whether it has developed properly. Repeat is an activity where the teacher asks the same question to the same child, in order to observe whether the answer is the same or different and whether there are other additional words. This indicates that the child's speaking and listening skills develop. In this case, Windura in (Permanik, 2017) said that in storytelling activities, it is evident that children are stimulated to tell stories again with a guide to the pictures in the book. The results of the study (Wati & Yulsyofriend, 2019) also explained that to train children in structuring sentence structures in communicating well, namely by giving questions that provoke children to speak in storytelling activities using media, then to develop vocabulary to children the teacher must pay attention to the meaning of words, word formation, and word structure and to develop articulation in children's speaking skills using explaining skills, questioning skills and clear reinforcement skills so that children are able to retell the contents of the stories told by the teacher. Reading picture book together is proven to be able to support the process of developing children's vocabulary (Lenhart et al., 2018). In line with this opinion (Ramadhani et al., 2018) explained that through fun play activities, children will more freely convey their imaginations in the form of meaningful speech or speech. This study aims to analyze an influence of Hello Book media on early childhood language skills.

Method
This type of research is a Quasi Experiment (Sugiyono, 2012). The independent variable in this study is the Hello Book media, while the dependent variable is early childhood language skills. This research was conducted at the Kindergarten in Nganjuk Regency in group B children in the odd semester of the 2020/2021 academic year. The population of this study were all students of the Kindergarten of Pembina Rejoso and TK Pertiwi 2 Sonobekel Tanjunganom, Nganjuk Regency. The sample of this research was taken randomly consisting of 2 experimental groups, class B1, and B2 in TK Negeri Pembina Rejoso totaling 30 students and 1 control group class B at TK Pertiwi 2 Sonobekel Tanjunganom totaling 28 students.
The research instrument used was a test instrument in the form of a pretest and posttest, with data analysis techniques including the prerequisite analysis test, and hypothesis testing using the Independent t-test. Before testing the hypothesis, it is necessary to test the prerequisite analysis, namely the normality test with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and the homogeneity test with the Levene test. The technique of collecting data through the observation technique of the child's development (ability) checklist sheet, in the process of learning activities carried out through Home Visit activities for each individual student, due to the Covid-19 Pandemic.
There are 4 indicators for assessing children's language skills in posttest activities, namely: 1) If the child is able to use and can answer the questions what, why, where, how, who, how and so on after reading the Hello Book media; 2) Children are able to speak in simple sentences of 4-5 words; 3) Children are able to retell the contents of simple stories that have been told by the teacher in order and easy to understand using the Hello Book media; 4) Children are able to name figures, objects or components in the Hello Book media. This is adjusted to the Hello Book media content which refers to the Early Childhood Education Curriculum 2013.

Results and Discussion Results
The process of collecting research data was obtained by conducting experiments. The experimental design used was Pretest Posttest Control Grop Design. The experiment was carried out in two groups, namely the experimental group and the control group. In this study, data on children's language skills were obtained through performance methods. The checklist sheet is used here to record the child's ability achieved during the implementation of the action (treatment) in order to measure children's language skills before and after being given treatment using the Hello Book media. This research was conducted at TK Negeri Pembina Rejoso, Nganjuk Regency in two groups B1 and B2, and group B TK Pertiwi 2 Sonobekel, Nganjuk Regency. The initial step taken in this study was to conduct a pretest. This activity was carried out to determine the child's initial ability before the treatment was given. After the pretest was carried out, the next step was giving treatment to groups B1 and B2, the form of treatment was the use of Hello Book media, while group B Tk Pertiwi Sonobekel was not given treatment using the Hello Book media. After the treatment has been completed, it is then continued with the prettest (final test). Below are the results of the research data analysis:

Testing Prerequisite Analysis
Before testing the hypothesis, the analysis requirements are tested to prove that the experimental group and the control group come from populations that are normally distributed and have the same variance between groups. So that the hypothesis can be tested with parametric statistics, namely the Independent t-test. Following are the results of the assumption test of the posttest scores of the control and experimental groups with a sample of 30 experiments and 28 for the control group. Based on Table 1, it can be concluded that the samples taken meet the assumption testing so that further hypothesis testing can be carried out.

Hyphotesis Test
Hypothesis testing was carried out to see whether there was a difference in the posttest scores of the control group and the experimental group on children's language skills after the use of Hello Book media in learning. The following results of hypothesis testing are presented in Table 2. If you see the results of the Levene test, then the one that is equal variances assumed is selected. Based on the table, it can be seen that the Sig. equal to 0.0001, so it can be interpreted that the Sig. less than the specified alpha value of 0.05. The conclusion is that Ho is rejected and Ha is accepted. The results from Table 3 show that the mean language ability of the experimental group is higher than the control group with a mean of 2,150. Based on the results of hypothesis testing, it can be concluded that there are differences in children's language skills in the control group and the experimental group after the use of the Hello Book media and children's language skills have also increased. Where the experimental group was given the action of using Hello Book media then for the control group using conventional learning. Thus, it can be interpreted that there is a positive and significant influence in the use of Hello Book media on early childhood language skills. Basically, the final goal in every lesson is to provide children with knowledge and skills to develop their abilities as provisions for children to be ready to move on to the next stage of education. Preparing the millennial generation who are able to increase their capacity, be competitive and productive. The learning strategy in this study was to compare the treated group using the Hello Book media with the untreated group. The results of this study indicate that the value of t = -4,303 with a sig. = 0.0001. The difference in the mean value between the experimental group and the control group was 2,150. From this it can be concluded that there is a positive and significant influence in the use of the Hello Book media on early childhood language skills. Based on the observation and assesment indicators of teacher in learning using the Hello Book media: Children are able to use and be able to answer questions what, why, where, how much, who, how and so on after the Hello Book media is read; Children are able to speak in simple sentences of 4-5 words; children are able to retell the contents of simple stories that have been told by the teacher in order and easy to understand using the Hello Book media; Children are able to name figures, objects or components in the Hello Book media.

Discussion
The results of this study are in line with the explanation (Sumaryati et al., 2017) that learning media is able to have a positive influence in the development of children's language (speaking) skills. An early childhood educator must understand the stages of early childhood language development and how to stimulate language development. Developing oral language skills of early childhood can be done in a variety of methods, one of which is by reading stories using picture book media. In this research, the teacher invites children to read Hello Book together, which in appearance is in the form of a picture story book, then the teacher also invites children to interact by asking questions about the contents of the story in the Hello Book media and about figures, places, and objects in picture. After that the child is asked to retell the contents of the story. The results of this study are supported by research (Ratnasari & Zubaidah, 2019) describes their findings which indicate a positive and significant influence from the use of pictorial story media. Where class A was given treatment using picture book media, their speaking ability increased more than class B whose learning only used conventional methods. Similar research results were also conducted by (Reed et al., 2015), who argued that picture story books could be more effective than story books that contained text only. The results of further research are as done by (Mol et al., 2009) stated that the use of interactive story books can improve a child's speaking ability, because in addition to the quality of the book, the frequency in using the storybook media is important in early childhood learning.
The process of learning in using the Hello Book media is in line with the concept of PEER (Promt, Evaluate, Expand and Repeat) developed by (Permanik, 2017) starting from Promt where the teacher's initiation to ask questions about various things related to stories / fairy tales, starting from questions and answers related to books, book covers, pages, stories, to things that intersect with stories. Evaluate is an activity to evaluate children. The extent to which he listens to the teacher, the teacher can observe the answers to the questions asked. Questions can be about the characters in the story, where the incident occurred or other questions related to the story. Expand is the development of words or ideas. Where the teacher will observe every word development and listen to the child, through the answers given by the child whether it has developed properly. Repeat is an activity where the teacher asks the same question to the same child, in order to observe whether the answer is the same or different and whether there are other additional words. This indicates that the child's speaking and listening skills develop. This is done to improve the child's ability to produce words or sounds which are then combined into a complete speech / sentence that can be understood by himself and others. Children can also develop their language skills in a happy and cheerful atmosphere because the Hello Book media has an interesting and colorful shape that matches the characteristics of early childhood.
Reading picture book together is proven to be able to support the process of developing children's vocabulary (Lenhart et al., 2018). Apart from this, the use of Hello Book media is able to enhance the interaction process between teachers and children and also improve the quality of the learning process which ultimately has an impact on student learning outcomes. The use of Hello Book media also provides direct experiences for children and children look enthusiastic in the learning process. Through fun play activities, children will more freely convey their imaginations in the form of meaningful speech or speech (Ramadhani et al., 2018). The completeness and limitations during the data collection process were the Covid-19 Pandemic which made the implementation process longer, and the implementation of learning could not be carried out in class but through Home Visit activities. However, the implementation of the Hello Book media has proven to be effective for children to use by learning while playing during learning activities from home, the children seem very enthusiastic and happy to use the Hello Book media. This is from the improvement of children's oral language skills before and after the implementation of the media using Hello Book.

Conclusion
Based on the results of data analysis, it can be concluded that there is a positive and significant effect of Hello Book on early childhood language skills. This can be seen from the increase in language skills scores before and after the use of Hello Book media. The existence of the Hello Book media is one strategy in achieving learning goals. PAUD educators or parents can take advantage of this Hello Book media as an alternative learning media that has been proven to be effective in helping develop early childhood language skills. Researchers provide advice to early childhood educators to continue to innovate in making learning media so that they can develop children's language skills meaningfully. This can be packaged in the form of interesting and fun play activities, as well as the attractiveness of the learning media used by educators that need to be an important concern. Then suggestions for parents to develop children's language skills at home do not apply a rigid learning process using a paper and pencil model, but can use play strategies while learning because the child's world is a world of play.