Developing children’s literary resources

Abstract

The Malay literary materials and resources for early childhood in Malaysia are still in the infant stage and have not been expanded to include the main references or developed into big book form. The children literature in our market is not published based on educational philosophy and research, but it is produced based on profit. The process of evaluating the quality of children’s literature needs to take into account the interest of the children, their visual ability, messages of the story, and the effect of the story on the children. Hence, a survey was carried out among 941 respondents including university students, preschool teachers and parents which were selected randomly in Malaysia. Learning outcomes identified were the main features which attracted the children to read. Malaysian children were found to be interested in stories with the themes on love, friendship and family, imaginative animals and funny characters, simple plots, colorful illustrations, big size story books with lots of dialog and video presentations (DVD/VCD). The main factors that are considered by parents when buying children’s literature materials are moral values, quality and activities in the stories. They expected CALL activities such as ICT games and exercises to be included to make teaching and learning more effective. Qualitative studies have shown that children were attracted by the stories developed that incorporate the above elements. Teachers also gave positive feedback on the application of the stories as teaching aid in kindergarten. Key words: Children literary, Malay literature, Malaysia, computer-assisted language learning (CALL), information and communications technology (ICT)