Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management Dubai, UAE, March 10-12, 2020 © IEOM Society International The Use of Word Card Media to Improve Early Reading Skill at Preschool Farida Samad, Vrieda Makingkung Early Childhood Education Department Faculty of Teacher Training and Education Khairun University Kampus I Akehuda Jl. Bandara Babullah Akehuda, Ternate, Maluku Utara, Indonesia faridasamad81@gmail.com Abstract Reading is a complex process involving many different parts of the developing brain. Language acquisition, symbolic representation, and the ability to hear and discriminate between sounds are all developmental abilities that are acquired over time and cannot be forced or rushed.. The aim of research is to find out how far the word card media was effective to improve early reading skill of group B students at TK Kemala Bhayangkari Kota Ternate. This research applied classroom action research. It consisted of 20 students of first semester academic years 2017/2018. The quantitative data collected using rate of percentage and qualitative data collected using observation, interview technique and analyzed descriptively. From this research, it was concluded that the students reading skill was improved after the implementation of word cards media in class. It could be seen in average score for each test that showed improvement from 60% (12 students) to 80% (16 students) from 20 students. In addition, 8 students failed in the criteria of success in reading on their first evaluation, finally they success on their second evaluation. Therefore, it can be concluded that the implementation of word media can improve the young learners reading skill. Keywords early reading skill, word card media 1. Introduction Reading is an important activity in every language. Reading is only incidentally visual; the reader then contributes more information by the print on the page (Brown 2001:299). In early reading activity, kindergarten students are not only reading the text, but also trying to be aware of words, to increase their intelligence as well as their vocabularies. Being able to apply the exact word to communicate what we mean benefit both speaker and listener or reader. At any time, they can expand the content on the word card to include part of the speech, synonym, antonym or other features. Early childhood education is the basic education aimed to stimulus students from birth up to the age of six by providing education to help the growth and development of physical and spiritual so that students have readiness in entering further education held on formal, informal and informal. Kindergarten is an early childhood education institution on formal education that organizes education programs for students aged 4-6 years. Children are in the process of the growth period, namely the development of all aspects of the physical ability, cognitive, language, social and emotional growing rapidly. Moreover, the child is an individual who has a particular characteristic of every aspect of its development especially language skills. Based on observation conducted in TK Bhayangkari Kota Ternate, that in general, learning to read is done is to follow the orders of teacher a child with a task in a work- sheet even by having children write and read the words on the board. Students at the group B had difficulties in early reading, because they are not familiar with certain words, less understanding of the meaning of words and also less interest to read. Moreover, the way of teachers in teaching seems monotonous and the learning process does not vary, less maximizes the use of learning media so that students quickly feel bored. In this case, their ability deal with early reading ability is still low. It can be seen in answering some related questions to the reading contain. 2135