Entering Children's Literacy Through Whole Language Approach

The aim of this research was to determine the influence of the whole language for kindergarten students, especially in early literacy. The researcher chose a whole language approach to help children age 4-5 years understanding early literacy because it integrated 4 language capabilities: reading, writing, listening and speaking in one package, and the children could learn all materials effectively. The samples of this research were 54 kindergarten students aged 4-5 years in Surabaya, following a quasi-experimental design that had an experimental group and control group. In the experimental group, the students did various interesting activities relating to literacy, while in the control group the students did usual learning activities. In this study, the data collection technique used were observation and documentation. The results of this research suggest that students in the experimental group show a greater development at all levels in literacy compared to the students in the control group. In addition, whole language approach was proven effective for early literacy learning.