Research Article
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Investigating The Children Story Book Title related to Coronavirus or COVID-19
toward Sentences Structure and Phrases Choices
Meita L. Sujatna
11The English Dept., Languages Faculty, Widyatama University
1sujatna.meita@widyatama.ac.id
Article History: Received: 10 January 2021; Revised: 12 February 2021; Accepted: 27 March 2021; Published
online: 20 April 2021
Abstract: This study is entitled "Investigating The Children Story Book Title related to Coronavirus toward Sentences Stucture and Phrases Choices". The data source used is taken from New York Book City School Library System. The objectives of this research are to (1) identify the sentence structure in children books’ title related to coronavirus or COVID-19 (2) identify the phrase types found in children boooks’ title related to coronavirus or COVID-19 . The method used in this research is a quantitative descriptive technique by classifying the title found in 143 books from interpreting the sentence structure and phrase type as the results. The theoretical basis of this research is the theory from Crystal (2003), Gelderen (2010), Gerot and Wignell (1994), Greenbaum and Nelson (2002), Halliday in Matthiessen (2004), Lynch-Brown (2005), Newsan and et al (2006) and Verspoor & Sauter (2002). The results of this study indicate that the highest number formed in sentences is declarative, and in phrases is noun phases, while not all the tile contains the word corona or covid.
Key words: Coronavirus, COVID-19, sentence, phrases, children books, title
1. Background
No one knows yet, when the pandemic will end. We will just have to live and adapt with it. Every country struggle to survive and cope with the condition, especially the children. It’s so hard for the children not to go to school to meet the friends but have to stay home instead to keep up with the condition. In this case, not only the children who got difficulties in understanding how dangerous the virus is but the parents need ways to persuade and to teach the children about the virus.
Not all parents are ready to teach their children at home just like shown by the following information. Based on U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some doctors wrote in weekly report (vol.69, No 49) that heightened stress, school closures, loss of income, and social isolation resulting from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have increased the risk for child abuse and neglect (1). Using National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) data from January 6, 2019– September 6, 2020, CDC tabulated weekly numbers of emergency department (ED) visits related to child abuse and neglect and calculated the proportions of such visits per 100,000 ED visits, as well as the percentage of suspected or confirmed ED visits related to child abuse and neglect ending in hospitalization, overall and stratified by age group (0–4, 5–11, and 12–17 years).
Data for U.S. ED visits among children and adolescents aged <18 years were obtained from NSSP’s BioSense Platform using a query for suspected and confirmed ED visits related to child abuse and neglect developed by NSSP, CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention, and local and state health departments (7).
Here is the figures that shows the data child abuse related to the pandemic.
FIGURE 1. Number (A) and proportion (B) of emergency department (ED) visits related to suspected and confirmed child abuse and neglect among children and adolescents aged <18 years, by week — National Syndromic Surveillance Program, United States, 2019–2020
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1,20 800 400 0 600 202 0 202 0 No. of ED v is it sResearch Article
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1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 Week 400 200 0 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 WeekFIGURE 2. Number (A) and percentage (B) of emergency department (ED) visits related to suspected and confirmed child abuse and neglect ending in hospitalization among children and adolescents aged <18 years, by week — National Syndromic Surveillance Program, United States, 2019–2020
40 30 20 10 0 Pr op or tion of ch ild a bu se /n eg le ct v is its p er 100 ,00 0 ED v is its 202 0 No. of ED v is it s end ing in hos pi ta li za ti on
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1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 Week 100 6 4 2 0 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 Week Pe rc en ta ge of v is its re la te d to c hild ab us e an d neg lect end ing in hos pi ta li za ti on 2020 2019Research Article
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The cases
The above data is taken from https:/www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker in March 9, 2021 at 06.45 (12:27 PM, US time). The cases are classified by age, the children case are relatively low whereas the age between 18 to 29, but potential to get the virus as well considering that children are too young to understand and to cope with the condition. The data show that there are 21,926.290 cases, with age group was available or 21,757,192 (99%) cases. By examining the charts and analyzing that even the number of the children cases are not too high, but it is still potential to increase if the preventive action do not run well. In this case, it is true that parents need to work together with the children in coping with the pandemic and the children book is one of the best ways to help with.
By reading a book, a child learns about people, places, and events that they couldn't learn otherwise. This gives children a deeper understanding of the world around them and cultures that are different from their own. Building stronger relationships.
Book Trust is the UK’s largest children’s reading charity that dedicated to getting children reading did a number of studies have found the enormous benefits of reading for child development. One study detailed the effects of reading on later literacy skills, facilitated social interaction between adults and children, and encouraged children to engage with the world around them. This stability allows them to access text constantly and can be of great benefit to children who grow up in challenging situations.
There are many other benefits that reading can have for a child's development, including:
Assisted cognitive development. Cognitive development refers to how the children perceive and think about
their world refers to intelligence, reasoning, language development, and thinking about their information. By reading to children, the parents are giving them a deep understanding of their world and filling their brains with background knowledge. They then use this acquired background knowledge to understand what they see, hear, and read, which aids their cognitive development.
Develops empathy. When the parents read a book, they put themselves in the story in front of them. This
allows them to develop empathy as they experience other lives and be able to identify their feelings. Children can then use this understanding to empathize in the real world with other people. In addition, children will gain a better understanding of emotions, which can help them understand their own and others' emotions. This helps their social development dramatically.
Get a deeper understanding. A book can take the children anywhere: to another city, to another country, or
even to an alternative world. By reading books, a child learns about people, places, and events that they could not choose to go wrong with. This gives children a deeper understanding of the world around them and a culture that is different from their own.
Build stronger relationships. If parents read regularly with their children, they will undoubtedly develop a
stronger relationship with them. Reading gives parents the opportunity to have regular, shared events that both parents and children can look forward to. Furthermore, it provides children with the feelings of care, love and reassurance that are key to nurture and well-being.
2% 10% 22% 16% 15% 21% 8% 4% 2%
Cases by Age
0 to 4
5 to 17
18 to 29
30 to 39
40 to 49
50 to 64
65 to 74
75 to 84
85 +
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So, based on the studies mentioned above, truly implied that reading for children can help parents to teach and tell certain situations, in this case about coronavirus or covid-19 better.
In the making of “My Hero is You” published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO license (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/igo). It is mentioned that this book was a project developed by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings (IASC MHPSS RG). The project was supported by global, regional and country based experts from Member Agencies of the IASC MHPSS RG, in addition to parents, caregivers, teachers and children in 104 countries. A global survey was distributed in Arabic, English, Italian, French and Spanish to assess children’s mental health and psychosocial needs during the COVID-19 outbreak. A framework of topics to be addressed through the story was developed using the survey results. The book was shared through storytelling to children in several countries affected by COVID-19. Feedback from children, parents and caregivers was then used to review and update the story.
“My Hero is You” is a book written for children around the world affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. “My Hero is You” should be read by a parent, caregiver or teacher alongside a child or a small group of children. It is not encouraged for children to read this book independently without the support of a parent, caregiver or teacher. The question is, Do the titles show the parents or caregiver that the books are about the coronavirus or covid?? Or Do all the title use coronavirus or covid-19 words in them, what kind of language structure used, so it’s easier for the parents or caregiver to access or find the book?
Just like the sample mentioned above, “My Hero is You” Nothing related to coronavirus or Covid-19 but written in a sentence, different from “the inside book” which is in the phrase form.
This research result will show you the children books title that has coronavirus or covid-19 in it and what kind of sentences structure use in the books’ title.
2. Literature Review
The objectives of this research are to:
1) identify the structure sentence in the children books title; and 2) identify types of phrases used in the title
3) identify whether the words coronavirus or covid-19 is used in the title or not to ease the parents in choosing the book
The benefits of this research are to:
1) contribute to the language research on title structure of the children books
2) be expected of help for parents or caregiver in choosing the book easier by reading the title. 3) be expected to increase other researcher’s insights doing the further studies
To answer the objectives above, the following review will explain further about children books, sentence mood, and phrases in brief.
Children Books
Lynch-Brown (2005) defined Children’s literature is good quality trade books for children from birth to adolescence, covering topics of relevance and interests to children of those ages, through prose and poetry, fiction and nonfiction.”
Further, Fadiman (2017) mentioned that “Children’s literature, the body of written works and accompanying illustrations produced in order to entertain or instruct young people”.
Just like Fadiman said “instruct young people”, it implies that the book can help persuade children to do something that could be difficult for parents to do so.
Sentences
As mentioned by Gerot and Wignell (1994:12) that there are three main kinds of meaning; ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning.
Ideational meaning (influenced by the field of discourse) is meanings about the things with they will going to do and the circumstances surrounding its activities. These meanings are realized through Participants, Processes and Circumstances.
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Interpersonal meaning (influenced by tenor of discourse) is meanings that express a speaker’s feelings. These are meanings for acting with the others and it are realized through mood and modality.
Textual meaning (influenced by mode of discourse) is meanings that express the relation of language to its environment: verbal and non-verbal. These meanings are realized through patterns of Theme and cohesion.
This research discussed the Interpersonal meaning. According to Halliday in Matthiessen (2004: 135), there are three general types of mood: declarative, interrogative and imperative.
In this study, the writer only focuses on the English sentences used in the children books titles perspective. The types of English sentences analyzed are limited on declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentence. Greenbaum and Nelson (2002) listed the four types of sentences that are associated with four major uses in communication:
The declarative sentence is a sentence in which something is stated or told. Verspoor and Sauter (2002: 18)
further explained when people communicate, they do so for various reasons, one of them is to inform someone of something. This communicative function has a typical sentence pattern. This pattern has the following syntactic characteristic: Subject whole verb. This type of sentence is named as declarative.
Greenbaum and Nelson (2002) stated that interrogative sentences has two main types of interrogative sentence: a) Yes–no questions begin with a verb. They require subject–operator inversion; that is, a reversal of the order of subject and verb (the order that is normal in declaratives). The verb that appears before the subject is an operator. They are called yes–no questions because they expect the answer yes or no. They may in fact be answered in other ways; for example, Certainly; Perhaps; I don’t know; What do you think? b) Wh-questions begin with an interrogative word or phrase. They are called wh-questions because most of the interrogative words begin with wh-(the exception is how). The interrogative phrases contain an interrogative word such as which in “On which days”. The interrogative word in wh-questions represents a missing piece of information that the speaker wants the hearer to supply.
Further, Greenbaum and Nelson (2002), explained imperative sentences. imperative sentences usually do not have a subject. If there is no auxiliary, the verb has the base form: “Take a seat”. “Pass me the bottle”. “Get out”. Modal auxiliaries do not occur with imperatives, and the only auxiliary that occurs with any frequency is passive be (usually in the negative): Don’t be carried away with the idea. The pronoun you may be added as a second person subject: You make me an offer. Occasionally, a third person subject is used: Somebody make me an offer. Those in the front row sit down. First and third person imperatives may be formed with let and a subject: “Let us go now”. Let’s not tell him. “Let us see the movie now”.
Exclamatory Sentences Exclamatory begins with what or how. What introduces noun phrases; how is used
for all other purposes. The exclamatory word or (more commonly) phrase is fronted: “What a beautiful scenery it is!”, “What a marvelous time we’ve had!”, “How time flies!” (‘Time flies extremely fast’). Exclamatory sentences express strong feeling. More specifically, they indicate the extent to which the speaker is impressed by something.
What and how are intensifiers expressing a high degree.
Phrases
Crystal (2003:74) stated that A phrase is a group of words that functions in a sentence as a single Part of speech. A phrase does not have a subject or a verb so it cannot stand alone a s an independent the unit t can function only as a part of speech.
Further, Newson and et al (2006:60) mentioned define a phrase as a group of words go together to form a unit which is the functional equivalent of the proper nouns in the original sentence. And then Gelderen (2010:35) said that the group of words is called a phrase. If the most important part of the phrase, i.e. the head, is an adjective, the phrase is an Adjective Phrase; if the most important part of the phrase is a noun, the phrase is a Noun Phrase, and so on.
Gelderen further explained that the grammatical categories Determiner and Coordinator do not form phrases of their own but function inside a Noun Phrase (NP), Adjective Phrase (AdjP), Adverb Phrase (AdvP). Verb Phrase (VP), and Prepositional Phrase (PP)
Research Article
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The method applied in this research was a quantitative descriptive non-experimental technique by classifying the title used in 143 books from interpreting the sentence structure and phrase type as the results. The research began with recognizing the language phenomenon that is used in creating the title in the children books. The selection of books use corona and covid as pandemic situation taken from New York Book City School Library System (https://nycdoe.libguides.com/COVID-19ebooks) the collection are free to access and provided in multiple languages for children about coronavirus/COVID-19.
Next, the titles were classified by its structure, namely sentences and phrases. They were further categorized according to sentence mood: declarative, interrogative and imperative sentences. While the phrases were grouped by its types: noun phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase, prepositional phrase and verb phrases to determine the extent to which all requirements are met.
Then, the next step was to find if the word corona or covid or none of them as part of the title to ease the parents and the caregiver to access the children books about corona or covid.
The analysis and discussion were further done to answer the research questions arise
4. Results and Discussion
The classification used to conduct the research into the following: 1) 65 sentences, divided into 6 imperative sentences, 41 Declarative Sentences, 18 Interrogative sentences, and none of exclamatory sentences 2) 17 has COVID, has CORONA 34, and 92 has neither both, 3) 78 phrase, divided to 63 Noun phrase as the highest number, 2 adjective phrase, 2 adverb phrase, 3 verb phrase, and 4 prepositional phrase
Title’s Structure
Out of the 143 (100%) titles structure phrases has higher percentage of 52% (74) than sentences 48% (69)
Sentence Structure Sentence, 69, 48% Phrase, 74, 52%
Title's Structure
Sentence PhraseResearch Article
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Out of 69 (100%) sentence structure consisted of interrogative sentence (18), declarative sentence (42), imperative sentence (9), and exclamatory sentence (0)
From the chart, it can be seen that mood types mostly used is declarative so that the interrogative mood type is used often enough. Then, imperative even it was in small number.
Types of Phrases
There are four types of phrases. Out of 74 (100%) namely adjective phrase (2), adverb phrase (2), noun phrases has the highest amount (63), prepositional phrase (4) and verb phrase (3)
To date with pandemic, titles are also classified by the content of word corona, covid, and none. Here is the chart:
The word Corona or Covid in Sentence Title
Declarative, 42, 61% Imperative , 9, 13% Interrogative , 18, 26% Exclamatory , 0, 0%
Sentence
Declarative Imperative Interrogative Exclamatory Adjective Phrase, 3% Adverb Phrase, 3% Noun Phrase, 85% Prepositional Phrase, 5% Verb Phrase, 4%Phrase
Adjective Phrase Adverb Phrase Noun Phrase Prepositional Phrase Verb PhraseResearch Article
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The title that has content of the word “corona” (20) out of 69, “covid” (4), and none of corona or covid (45). Since the highest number is the title without corona or covid in it, implies that the title doesn’t really show the topic of the book or maybe the authors use other words that have other implications. So with the content of the title in the form of phrases in the following:
The word Corona or Covid in Phrase Title
It can be seen from the chart above, that just like the sentence title, the phrases that have content of the word “corona” (14) out of 74, “covid” (13), and none of corona or covid (47). Since the highest number is the title without corona or covid in it, implies that the title has quite similar result with the sentence title; it doesn’t really show the topic of the book or maybe the authors use other words that have other implications.
5. Conclusion and Suggestion
The results show that, out of 143 books, 69 titles are formed in sentences. There are three type of sentences used in children book titles. they are declarative 42 titles (61 % out of 69), interrogative 18 (26%), and imperative 9 (13%), sentences
The phrases found in the title are 74 phrases, namely, noun phrase 63 (85% out of 74), prepositional phrase 4 (5%), verb phrase 3 (4%) adjective phrase 2 (3%), and adverb phrase 2 (3%).
Finally, the word corona found in sentences (out of 69) is 20 (29%), covid 4 (6%), and none 45 (65%). In phrases, the word corona (out of 74) is 14 (19 %), covid 13 (18%), and none 47 (64%).
29% 6% 65%
Sentence
Corona Covid None 19% 18% 63%Phrase
CORONA COVID NONEResearch Article
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So, it can be concluded that the word corona or covid is not always found in the title to ease the parents or the caregiver while finding the book based on the title choice, but still the other ways can help the parents and caregiver to find book by checking the category or group.
Further research on this matter especially the impact of certain factors such as the reading methods, the choices on books influencing the children understanding are suggested,
Reference
1. Crystal, (2003). Rediscover Grammar. Pearson/Longman, 47–57.
2. Gelderen, Elly van, (2010). An Introduction to the Grammar of English. Revised Edition. John Benjamins Publishing Company. 35-42
3. Gerot and Wignell, (1994). Making Sense of Functional Grammar.
4. Greenbaum, S. & Nelson, G. (2002). An Introduction to English Grammar. Longman, 65-69 5. Halliday in Matthiessen (2004). An Introduction to Fucntional Grammar. Oxford University
Press.Inc., 135-142
6. Kroeger, Paul R. (2005). Analyzing Grammar, An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 85-86 7. Lynch-Brown, C. & Tomlinson, C. (2005). Essentials of Children’s Literature, 5th edition. 2-3
8. Newson , M ; Hardy's , M ; pup , D ; Szecsenyi , k ; Toth , G, and Vincze , V . ( 2006 ) : Basic English syntax with exercises . Boksesz Konzorcium : Minden joy Fennturva
9. Vespoor. M. & Sauter K. (2000). English Sentence Analysis: An Introductory Course. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 16-17
10. Lingga & Alam (2019). The Acquisition of English Sentences by Children of Four and Five Years
Old. Journal of English Teaching, Applied Linguistics an Literature (JETALL), 86-88
11. Junaid (2013). The Basic Concept of Children Literature. English and Literature Journal, Vol 1, No 1, 22-23 12. https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/why-is-reading-important-for-children/#:~:text=By%20reading%20a%20book%2C%20a,Building%20stronger%20relationships. 13. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics 14. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6949a1.htm 15. https://nycdoe.libguides.com/COVID-19ebooks
