Initial Need Assessment on English Teaching Based on Riau Malay Folklore: Digital Innovation in Preserving Culture

Riau Province is a province where the majority of the people are Malay. Malays in Riau province have a variety of cultural arts so that the effort to preserve Malay culture can be done in a variety of ways to be sustainable (Culture Sustainable Development) to the children and grandchildren. In this research, short-term research, researchers will observe, analyze, collect data on various Malay folklore that exist in Riau that will be developed next in the form of digital innovation for preserving Riau Malay folklore. Then, the researcher will develop into teaching English and then the end of the product of this study is textbook material containing Malay folklore that will be developed into English in the next following research. This initial research design used by the researcher is qualitative descriptive with the population of Islamic junior high school students in Pekanbaru Riau. The findings of this study showed that folklores gave valuable pedagogical perspectives to be shared to the young generation as a heritage which should be kept and treated as a wealth while from the teachers' perspectives also given positive and negative responses thus most of the teacher participants agreed to provide learning materials in form technology advancement. The result product at this initial research is the questionnaires and interview result which will be the former analyzed to continue the next product of digital and next textbook will follow the standards of the National Education Standards Agency (BSNP) which consists of the Standard Content for Primary and Secondary Education which then consists of Core Competency and Competency Levels according to certain levels and types of education and Core Competencies include spiritual attitudes, social attitudes, knowledge and skills, so that textbooks containing Malay folklore can be maintained and preserved in order to be contained in the book and useful in the development of learning. The initial background (preliminary study) for this research is the phenomenon of teaching English which does not involve elements of local culture in learning English.