DIGITAL COMIC: AN INNOVATION OF USING TOONDOO AS MEDIA TECHNOLOGY FOR TEACHING ENGLISH SHORT STORY

ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education Volume 7, Issue 2, June 2019 p-ISSN 2301-7554, e-ISSN 2541-3643 https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE DIGITAL COMIC: AN INNOVATION OF USING TOONDOO AS MEDIA TECHNOLOGY FOR TEACHING ENGLISH SHORT STORY Asri Siti Fatimah English Education, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Siliwangi University, Indonesia E-mail: Santiana English Education, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Siliwangi University, Indonesia E-mail: Yuyus Saputra English Education, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Siliwangi University, Indonesia E-mail: APA Citation: Fatimah, A. S., Santiana, S., & Saputra, Y. (2019). Digital comic: An innovation of using ToonDoo as media technology for teaching English short story. English Review: Journal of English Education, 7(2), 101-108. doi: 10.25134/erjee.v7i2.1526. Received: 24-01-2019 Accepted: 23-03-2019 Published: 01-06-2019 Abstract: This study investigates the use of ToonDoo as media technology for teaching English short story. ToonDoo as the newest technology for creating comic or picture story is very beneficial helping teacher to creatively provide innovative strategy providing better classroom environment for the English learners, especially for those studying English short story. As the invented prose narrative shorter than a novel dealing with a few characters, short story can give an important content raising cultural awareness, linguistic awareness, motivation, and is claimed to improve all four skills. Therefore, this study aims at knowing how the implementation of ToonDoo in teaching English short story and finding out the benefits of this tool for teaching performance. To gain the data, reflective journal created by a pre-service teacher who becomes the participant of the study and interview were used to reflect the process of creating Toondoo and the process of teaching English short story using this tool. The findings showed that this tool can be used to promote students’ speaking skill. Toondoo is very helpful to facilitate students’ imagination promoting their speaking ability, producing better learning experience, and creating a good classroom atmosphere. Keywords: English short story; pre-service teacher; reflection; technology; ToonDoo. instructional tools in the classroom in order to guide students to achieve the learning objectives. ToonDoo as one of the web-based applications provided on the internet is known as easy and appealing application which can be used as instructional tool the teachers to create picture and use it for teaching. Kirchoff and Cook in Fatimah and Santiana (2017) point out that ToonDoo is a free, fully online comic creator, one that offers many options for comic strip creation through a user-friendly interface. This web-based application tool is really beneficial allowing teachers to create cartoon by only choosing comic strips components, such as setting, characters, props, clip, art, and text bubble provided on its application. Its component is categorized to help users find what they are looking for and select just the right image. Moreover, they can upload pictures taken from internet or their own if they want. This feature is useful and easy to use. INTRODUCTION The use of instructional media for teaching is really important helping teachers to deliver the material and create interesting activities in the classroom. Teachers may not only use traditional media such as pictures, cards, authentic materials and boards for teaching English, but they can also use song, audio visual, and instructional technology for helping them give instruction to the students. Today, there are so many instructional media for teaching English which have been introduced by several experts. It is certainly proven that technology used for teaching English grows very fast so that teachers are really helped to provide better classroom experience for the student (Fatimah & Santiana, 2017). Thus, they will be very easy to find the media technology provided on mobile application and web-based internet that give different environment. As a result, teachers are encouraged to creatively give the suitable 101 Asri Siti Fatimah, Santiana, & Yuyus Saputra Digital comic: An innovation of using ToonDoo as media technology for teaching English short story Similar to other web-based technology, teachers need to create an account by submitting name and email address to use ToonDoo. It provides fifteen options for panel layout, from one to four panels of equal or varying sizes. It also has option to create individual comic strips or to combine panels to form books (i.e., collections) of multiple strips (Kirchoff & Cook, 2015). Moreover, this tool also consists of sharing options allowing the users to share their comic on internet. Students can select from public (where anyone can view), private (where only they can view), and shared (where they can select who views) for their product. This can create different setting and experience for the students which can increase their motivation to study. Gonzalez (2016) has found that the elaboration of the comic in ToonDoo was something very motivating for the students. The use of comics in EFL setting is not new since it provides chronological images that provide narrative to their audience. This media is useful to stimulate students’ ideas. Comics are art form that features a series of static images in fixed sequence, usually to tell a story. Typically, comics are printed on paper and text is often incorporated into the images (Yunus, et al., 2012). However, the use of comics in education context has surprisingly long history. Since the early 1940s, many scholars in the USA have investigated that the use of comic books did not give meaningful benefits. It was also stated that comics were a harmful literacy tool. In the 1970s, however, teachers began to dare to use comics books again and it becomes influential when Art Spiegelman’s comics book, Maus, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. It proves that it can be artistically mature and literate works (Retalis as cited in Yunus et al., 2012). Actually, there are many strengths of using comics in teaching English. Comics consist of pictures which are usually interesting for the students. Children have a natural attention to comic because of its elements. Comics can intrisically motivate the students to learn and take advantage from the extraordinary motivating power of this media. Furthermore, comics are known as a permanent, visual component, in contrast to film and animation, where the medium dictates the pace of the viewing process. The text medium is similarly permanent, but not ‘pictorial’. ‘Visual permanence’ is distinctive to comic, as time within a comic book progresses at the pace of a reader (Willian & Yang, as cited in Yunus et al., 2012). Garcia cited in Gonzalez (2016) argues that there are some advantages of using comics in the classroom, specifically in the foreig (...truncated)