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 ELT FORUM 5 (2) (2016) 

 

Journal of English Language Teaching 
 

http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt 

 

 

ENGLISH DIGITAL TALKING BOOKS AS MEDIA TO TEACH 

NARRATIVE WRITING 

 

Ainul Hufron  Novia Trisanti, S.Pd., M.Pd  

 

English Department. Faculty of Languages and Arts. State University of Semarang. 

 

Aticle Info 

________________ 
Article History: 

Received in April 2016 

Approved in April 2016 

Published in May 2016 

________________ 
Keywords: 

English digital talking 

books; simple brochure; 

writing; narrative text; 

experimental study. 

____________________ 

Abstract 
___________________________________________________________________ 
There are many studies have been conducted to investigate the use of talking book, but not with the digital talking 

book. In other words, the use of digital talking book has not been widely prevalent among the EFL learners. This 

study investigated whether there is any significant differences on the students’ writing achievement between those 

who are taught by using English digital talking books and those who are taught by using simple brochure as 

media. The population of the study was the twelfth grade students of SMA N 1 Comal, Pemalang, in the 

academic year of 2014/2015). There were 80 students, divided into two groups of 40, participated in this quasi 

experimental study as experimental and control group. The result of t-test showed that the difference between the 

students who were taught using English digital talking books and those who were taught using simple brochures 

can’t be seen significantly. It also showed that in this study, English digital talking books were more effective 

than simple brochures to improve students’ ability in writing a narrative text. 

 

© 2016 Universitas Negeri Semarang 

 
 Correspondent Address:  

   B3 Building  FBS Unnes  

   Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229 

   E-mail: ainoel20@gmail.com 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ISSN 2252-6706 

 

 

 

 

 



 

Ainul Hufron / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (2) (2016) 

2 

INTRODUCTION 

Background of the Study 

As one of the four language skills that 

should be mastered by English language learners, 

writing is a very different skill because it is needed 

to choose the words and phrases, and then 

somehow put them all in a good order. One of the 

common problems faced by students is the 

question about what things to write. It happens 

even when they are about to start their writing. 

Therefore, media are needed in teaching and 

learning process to make students easier in 

writing. 

Media are important thing to attract the 

students’ attention and motivation that can help 

them develop their creativity and imagination in 

expressing their idea. Related to media, Arsyad 

(2004: 4) states that learning medium, in general 

is a component of learning resources or a physical 

vehicle containing instructional material in the 

students’ environment, which is able to stimulate 

the students to learn. 

Dealing with the use of audiovisual aid as 

media in teaching, Stemplesky (1990:3-4) states 

about the importance of a moving picture 

component as a language teaching aid which is 

able to increase the students’ motivation. 

Children and adults feel their interest quicken 

when language is experienced in a lively way 

through television and video.  

Furthermore, Berk (2009) stated that video 

materials can draw on the learners’ multiple 

intelligences and learning styles to maximize 

their understanding. When videos and 

multimedia learning are combined, an empirical 

basis is provided for the use of videos in teaching 

languages. 

This study investigated the use and the 

effectiveness of English digital talking books as 

media to teach English writing, especially 

narrative text. There are some previous studies 

which are relevant to teaching English using 

audiovisual media: Hanik (2009) studied The Use 

of an Animated Film Entitled “Garfield the Movie” to 

Improve the Students’ Ability in Writing Narrative 

Texts. This final project is an experimental study 

to answer the question of how an animated film 

entitled “Garfield the Movie” is used in teaching 

writing narrative text. The result of the research 

showed that the use of the animated film entitled 

“Garfield the Movie” in teaching writing 

narrative text was effective. Besides, the film can 

attract the students’ attention in learning process. 

Mathew and Alidmat (2013) investigated 

the Usefulness of Audio-Visual Aids in EFL 

Classroom at undergraduate level at Aljouf 

University, Saudi Arabia. The findings of this 

investigation suggest that using audio-visuals as a 

teaching method stimulates thinking and 

improves learning environment in a classroom.  

Shahani and Tahriri (2015) investigated 

the effect of silent and freeze-frame viewing 

techniques of video materials on the intermediate 

English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ 

listening comprehension. The results of this 

quasi-experimental study revealed that there was 

a statistically significant difference between the 

experimental groups (using two types of viewing 

techniques) and the control group (using written 

materials). 

Nurani (2012) studied The Effectiveness of 

Using Video to Improve Students’ Writing Skill of 

News Item Text. The result showed that there was 

a significant difference on students’ writing 

achievement between students who were taught 

news item text using video and those who are 

taught news item text using pictures. 

Another study was conducted by Olivianti 

(2011). It was an action research that aimed to 

find an interesting and effective way in learning 

narrative. She used written story in the first cycle 

and a film in the second cycle. The result showed 

that there was a significant difference in the 

achievement of students’ writing before and after 

using the audio-visual aid. It was proven by the 

significant difference between the average score 

of the pre-test (60.68) and the average score of the 

post-test (78.54). 

Dealing with the media, digital talking 

book is an audiovisual aid developed from 

conventional talking book. According to 

Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 

Talking Book is a spoken recording of a book, 

used especially by blind people. 

The English digital talking books used in 

this research are published by Appuseries. It’s a 



 

Ainul Hufron / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (2) (2016) 

3 

weblog managed by Media Fusion. The 

Appuseries has a wealth of content for kids that 

not only helps them learn about the world around 

them but also helps in better retention of these 

lessons by mixing learning with multimedia 

entertainment. 

 

METHOD OF THE STUDY 

The writer used quasi-experimental 

method with the design “Pre-test Post-test 

Nonequivalent Groups”. According to Hartoyo 

(2002), with this design, both a control and an 

experimental group are compared. However, the 

groups are chosen and assigned out of 

convenience rather than through randomization. 

This might be the method of choice for our study 

on work experience as it would be difficult to 

choose students in a school setting at random and 

place them in specific group and classes. Those 

students who participated would be our treatment 

group; those who did not would be our control 

group. 

 

The design of the experiment can be described as the following:  

E  Non R  01 X 02 

 

C  Non R  03 Y 04 

 

It involved an experimental group, a 

control group, and treatments in collecting data. 

The two groups were taught with the same topic 

but using different media. The experimental 

group was taught using English digital talking 

book. Meanwhile, the control group was taught 

using simple brochure or leaflet.  

The study involved 80 students, divided 

into two groups of 40, at the twelfth grade of 

SMA Negeri 1 Comal, Pemalang, in the 

academic year of 2014/2015. I took XII IPA 1 as 

the experimental group and XII IPA 2 as the 

control group.  

In collecting data, two kinds of instruments 

were used. The first was writing test consisted of 

try-out test, pre-test and post-test. It was used as 

an instrument to collect data because writing is a 

productive skill. The other instrument was 

questionnaire. It was used to find out the 

effectiveness of the media dealing with the 

students’ motivation and attitude to English 

teaching learning. Questionnaire design used in 

this research was closed-ended questions.  There 

were two questionnaires given only to students of 

experimental group. The first one was given in 

the beginning of the study, before introducing the 

strategies (pre-test) and the second questionnaire 

was carried out in the end of the study (post-test).  

Some steps which are done in a 

chronologic order are always required in 

conducting an experiment. In collecting data, the 

writer firstly chose the twelfth grade students of 

SMA N 1 Comal as the population based on the 

following consideration: 

(1) After I checked the average scores of the 

population on English subject, XII IPA 1 and 

XII IPA 2 were in the same level or quality 

in English achievement. There was no 

significant difference between their scores.  

(2) In addition, after I consulted to the English 

teacher, he approved it and also 

recommended those two classes as the 

samples of the experiment.  

The next step was taking two groups which 

had the same characters consisting of 40 students 

for each group from the population as the sample 

of the experiment. I chose XII Science 1 as the 

experimental group and XII Science 2 as the 

control group. 

The third step was conducting try out test 

and the first questionnaire with the purpose of 

finding out the appropriateness and the reliability 

of the instrument. It was followed by giving the 

pre-test to measure the dependent variable before 

the treatment. 

After scoring the result of the pre-test and 

analyzing them, the writer applying the 

experiment by giving the treatments for both 

groups. The students of two groups were given 

the same material about narrative text but the 

students in the control group were taught without 

using English digital talking book as a media. The 



 

Ainul Hufron / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (2) (2016) 

4 

next step was giving the post-test and the second 

questionnaire, scoring the result of the post-test 

and analyzing them followed by calculating the 

means of the result (pre-test post test) of the two 

groups, comparing the difference between the 

result of the pre-test and the post-test, and 

applying the T-test to analyze whether the 

difference was significant or not. Finally, the 

writer drew the conclusion from the result. 

 

RESEARCH FINDING AND DISCUSSION 

In this part, the result and the analyses of 

the pre-test, post-test, first and second 

questionnaire will be presented. 

 

Pre-test Finding 

Pre-test is the test that is held before giving 

the treatments. It was conducted on Thursday, 

November 20, 2014. The average score of the 

control group was 61.30 and the experimental 

group was 62.10. It meant that the students’ 

achievement of the control and the experimental 

groups was relatively the same before the 

treatments were given. It was proven by the t-test 

formula. 

The number of subjects in this study for the 

control and the experimental groups were 80 with 

the degree of freedom (df) = 78, that was Nx + 

Ny - 2 = 78. At the 5% (0.05) alpha level of 

significance, t-value for the pre-test that was 

obtained was 0.277. The t-test for Equality of 

Means yielded Sig. (2-tailed) value of 0.782 

which was higher than α level of 0.05 (0.782 > 

0.05). Therefore, it could be concluded that there 

was no significant difference between the mean 

score of the two groups in the pre-test at 5% 

significance level with 78 degrees of freedom. 

Below is the chart of the students’ average 

score which covers five components of writing. 

The Average Scores Result of the Pre-test 

 

 

Post-test Finding  

The post-test was conducted on Tuesday, 

December 02, 2014. The purpose of this test was 

to find out the students’ ability in writing 

narrative text after the treatments were given. The 

post-test average score of the control group was 

70.70 and the experimental group was 74.90. It 

showed that the achievement of the experimental 

group was higher than the control group in the 

post-test. However, there was no significant 

difference between those two groups’ 

achievement. It was proven by the t-test formula. 

The number of subjects was 80 with the 

degree of freedom (df) = 78, that was Nx + Ny - 

2 = 78. At the 5% (0.05) alpha level of 

significance, and t-value that was obtained was 

0.943. The t-test for Equality of Means yielded 

Sig. (2-tailed) value of 0.068 which was higher 

than α level of 0.05 (0.068 > 0.05). It meant that 

Ho (There was no significant difference between 

mean score of control and experimental group in 

0

0,5

1

1,5

2

2,5

3

3,5

4

Control Group

Experimental Group



 

Ainul Hufron / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (2) (2016) 

5 

the pre-test) should be accepted. Therefore, it 

could be concluded that there was no significant 

difference between the mean score of the two 

groups in the post-test at 5% significance level 

with 78 degrees of freedom. 

Below is the chart of the students’ average 

score which covers five components of writing.  

The Average Score of the Post-test 

 

 

Difference between the two means 

It was hypothesized that the difference 

occurs. To measure the significance of the pre-test 

and the post-test, the t-test was used. In this case, 

the researcher used manual statistical 

computation. The number of subjects in this 

study for the control and experimental groups 

were 80 with the degree of freedom (df) = 78, that 

was Nx + Ny - 2 = 78. At the 5% (0.05) alpha 

level of significance, the obtained t-value was 

0.94 and t-table was 2.00, so the t-value is lower 

than t-table. It means that there is no significant 

difference between the two means.  

It meant that Ho (There was no significant 

difference between mean score of control and 

experimental group in the pre-test) should also be 

accepted. Therefore, it could be concluded that 

there the difference between the mean score of the 

two groups in the post-test at 5% significance 

level with 78 degrees of freedom can’t be seen 

significantly. 

 

Analysis of the first questionnaire 

The result of the first questionnaire 

revealed that the students’ attitude toward the 

English narrative writing still needed 

improvement. They had realized the importance 

of learning English narrative writing. However, 

they felt that it was a difficult task to do writing. 

It can be seen from their responses to the forth 

question. They thought that their writing ability 

was not the same with their expectation. 

Although the class ran relatively well, there 

was still something can be done to improve the 

quality of the learning process. Since more than 

half of the class was not so interested in learning 

English narrative writing, an interesting 

technique or medium is needed to draw their 

interest and attention in learning process. From 

the next questions, it can be concluded that the 

students had a high interest to learn English 

narrative writing through audiovisual media. 

Therefore, it was expected that they could 

improve their ability in writing, especially in 

producing narrative text. 

 

Analysis of the second questionnaire 

The result of the second questionnaire 

showed that the implementation of the treatments 

had made the students changed their perception 

toward writing, improve their ability, and create 

more comfortable and enjoyable learning 

activities. The students had also felt the benefit of 

learning by using audiovisual media as they 

0

0,5

1

1,5

2

2,5

3

3,5

4

Control Group

Experimental Group



 

Ainul Hufron / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (2) (2016) 

6 

admitted they had been satisfied with their 

writing result. Moreover, they also considered the 

use of it was quite needed to help improving their 

ability in learning English, especially in writing 

narrative. The other thing to be considered is the 

process in choosing and applying audiovisual 

media which should be done creatively, carefully, 

and effectively to make them helpful in the 

learning process. 

 

DISCUSSION OF THE RESEARCH 

FINDINGS 

The aim of the test is to investigate whether 

there is any significant difference of the students’ 

achievement in writing narrative text taught using 

simple brochure in control group and English 

digital talking book in experimental group as 

media at the twelfth grade students of SMA 

Negeri 1 Comal, Pemalang in the academic year 

of 2014/2015. 

In the pre-test, the average scores of the 

control and the experimental groups were 61.30 

and 62.10. From the pre-test, it can be said that 

the ability of the two groups was relatively the 

same. From the scores, it can be concluded that 

the two groups were homogenous, because there 

was only slight difference in the pre-test result 

between the control group and the second one 

(experimental group).  

After receiving the treatment, the average 

score of the experimental group was higher than 

the control group. The experimental group got 

74.90 and the control group got 70.70. 

Providing students with English digital 

talking book made an upgrading in their writing 

ability more than just giving them simple 

brochure. It can be seen in the average of each 

aspect both in the pre-test and the post-test section 

below. 

Average of Each Aspect both in Pre-Test and 

Post-Test of the Control Group 

Aspect Pre-test Post-test 

Grammar 3.10 3.45 

Vocabulary 3.23 3.48 

Mechanic 3.08 3.38 

Relevance 2.95 3.70 

Fluency 2.98 3.68 

 

Average of Each Aspect both in Pre and Post-Test 

of the Experimental Group 

Aspect Pre-test Post-test 

Grammar 3.13 3.58 

Vocabulary 3.20 3.58 

Mechanic 3.30 3.90 

Relevance 3.00 3.90 

Fluency 2.90 3.78 

 

From both of the tables above, it can be 

seen that the students’ writing narrative ability 

which were taught using English digital talking 

book and simple brochure showed an 

improvement. However, mean the post-test score 

of the experimental group of each aspect was 

higher than the post-test score of the control 

group. The increasing ability involving the whole 

aspects of the components of writing: grammar, 

vocabulary, mechanic, relevance and fluency. 

From the pre-test finding, the students’ 

grammar was still weak, most of them (in both 

groups), translated words from Indonesian into 

English. They did not understand how to produce 

some English sentences into a good structure. It 

was revealed that they forgot about Simple Past 

Tense and Passive Voice. They did not change 

Verb 1 into Verb 2. Although they have been XII 

grade senior high school students, most of them 

did not use the form of “to be” for Past Tense 

properly. They also forgot about plural forms, 

and other small grammar errors. After getting 

treatments using English digital talking book as 

the media, on average, students’ grammar ability 

of the experimental group (3.58) improved more 

than the students’ which were taught using simple 

brochure (3.45). 

The second writing aspect is vocabulary. In 

the pre-test, the students in both groups used 

some inappropriate words for showing ideas in 

their writing and as stated above, most of them 

translated words from Indonesian into English. 

They sometimes looked up in their dictionary 

(most of them used Alfalink – an electronic 

dictionary) then use the translation 

inappropriately to the context. In the post-test, for 

students of the two groups, their vocabulary 

improved because they had been taught more 

about narrative stories and vocabularies. 



 

Ainul Hufron / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (2) (2016) 

7 

The next aspect is mechanic. The students’ 

spelling ability was also weak. Most students, in 

both groups, typed some English words 

incorrectly, for example: they wrote hapily or 

happyli instead of happily. Another word was 

beautiful which was written as beautifull or 

beautiful. Dealing with the grammar problem, 

many students typed verbs in the participle or 

past-participle incorrectly. The next problem was 

the use of articles “a” and “the” where many 

students did it inappropriately. i.e, “Once upon a 

time, there lived the clever deer in the very thick 

forrest”. Article “the” in “the clever deer” should 

be article of “a” because it was the beginning 

(introduction) stage. After they were explained 

the way how to spell those words and some 

others, they could write them correctly in the 

treatments and post-test. 

The last two writing aspects were the worst 

compared to the other aspects. The students’ 

ability in relevance aspect was so poor in the 

pretest. They lacked of understanding of how to 

give appropriate title, to make effective 

introductory paragraph, lead to body, or give 

supporting evidence for generalizations. Some of 

them, even, did not give the title for their texts. 

After providing them with English digital talking 

book completed with the help of explanation 

from the teacher, the students of the experimental 

group were better in organizing their ideas 

compared to the control group.  

Talking about the fluency (content), there 

was a significant difference between the content 

of students’ writing in the pretest and the posttest 

for both of control and experimental group. In the 

pretest, they did not have any sources what they 

have to write, except their own prior knowledge 

about the topic. So, they only produced very 

simple sentences. It made the writing rather 

confusing to be understood. After getting 

treatment, the content of students’ writing was 

improved. The English digital talking book 

provided them much more needed information 

related to the topic than the simple brochure did. 

Therefore, they produced more sentences.  

Based on the statistical computation from 

the writing test result, it can be seen that there was 

no significant difference on the students’ 

achievement between those who were taught 

writing narrative using English digital talking 

books and those who were taught using simple 

brochure as the media. 

The computation result also told us that 

there was strong evidence that the teaching using 

English digital talking book improved the 

students’ marks on writing narrative text. In the 

computation, it improved marks, on average, by 

approximately 12.80 points. It can be concluded 

that English digital talking book was effective to 

be used as a medium in teaching narrative 

writing, although it was not significant. 

From the questionnaire, we could see that 

the implementation of the treatments had made 

the students changed their perception toward 

writing, improve their ability, and create more 

comfortable and enjoyable learning activities. 

The students had also felt the benefit of learning 

by using audiovisual media as they admitted they 

had been satisfied with their writing result. 

Moreover, they also considered the use of it was 

quite needed to help improving their ability in 

learning English, especially in writing narrative. 

The other thing to be considered is the process in 

choosing and applying audiovisual media which 

should be done creatively, carefully, and 

effectively to make them helpful in the learning 

process. 

 

CONCLUSION 

As the result indicated, the difference on 

students’ writing narrative text achievement 

between those who were taught using English 

digital talking book and those who were taught 

using simple brochure as media can’t be seen 

significantly. However, based on the mean of pre-

test and post-test score of each group, the use of 

both English digital talking book and simple 

brochure improved the students’ achievements in 

writing narrative text. The result also revealed 

that the experimental group performed better 

than the control group in their post-test. Thus, the 

writer come to the conclusion that even though it 

can’t be seen significantly, the use of English 

digital talking book still yielded a better 

improvement of the students’ writing narrative 



 

Ainul Hufron / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (2) (2016) 

8 

text ability and was more effective to be used in 

teaching writing narrative text.  

English digital talking books could be 

suggested as an interesting media in teaching 

writing narrative text because they are able to 

attract not only the students’ attention but also 

their willingness to learn writing. Next, the use of 

English digital talking books could also help 

teachers to find another way in teaching 

especially in writing narrative text and will trigger 

them to improve their teaching methods so that 

they can make their students more motivated to 

write English text since they need enjoyable and 

not monotonous teaching-learning activities and 

finally improve the students’ achievements in 

their writing ability. Then, using short text is 

suggested because students sometimes feel bored 

listening to teacher’s explanation. Also, the text 

should be easy to be understood by the students 

so they can easily make the reconstruction text. 

Finally, it is hoped that the result of this 

research will be useful for readers. This research 

also can be used as one of the references for the 

next researchers who want to conduct deeper 

research by using all various kinds of media 

including English digital talking book. They are 

also expected to be able to cover the limitation in 

this study and provide more detailed information 

about this study. 

 

REFERENCES 

Arsyad, A. 2004. Media Pembelajaran. Jakarta: PT. 

Raja Grafindo Persada 

 

Berk, I. A. (2009). Multimedia teaching with video 

clips: TV, movies, and mtvU in the college 

classroom. International Journal of 

Technology in Teaching and Learning, 5, 1-21. 

 

Hanik, S. U. 2009. The Use of an Animated Film 

Entitled “Garfield the Movie” to Improve the 

Students’ Ability in Writing Narrative 

Texts. Final Project English Department FBS 

Unnes. 

 

Hartoyo. 2009. Introduction to Linguistics Research. 

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Mathew, N. G., & Alidmat, A. O. H. 2013. A Study 

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