THE USE OF WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES TO DETERMINE RECEPTIVE SKILLS AMONG MALAY LEARNERS OF ARABIC LANGUAGE

Aliyu Abdullahi¹⁺ --- Nurazan Binti Mohmad Rouyan² --- Siti Salwa binti Mohd Noor³

^1,2,3Centre of Arabic Language Studies, Faculty of Languages and Communication, Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA), 21300 Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, Malaysia

Keywords:Arabic Language skills Malay students Performance SLA Web 2.0 technologies.

ARTICLE HISTORY: Received:25 May 2018. Revised:20 June 2018. Accepted:2 July 2018. Published:9 July 2018.

Contribution/ Originality:This study contributes in the existing literature in Educational Revolution 4.0. The application of Quiz-Creator has practical implication for attaining the Arabic language proficiency knowledge up to International Standard. The same process used in this study can be applied by AFL Arabic teachers in teaching Arabic Language Skills.

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1. The Problems of Learning Arabic in Malaysian Context

Learning a second language is more difficult than learning a mother tongue (Wotley, 2017 ; Ottenheimer and Pine, 2018 ). Various studies highlight many issues concerning the difficulties foreign language learners encounter and some suggestions are given based on the skills needed by learners. Thus, in Malaysian context where the Arabic language is learned as a foreign language, both teachers and learners are facing various challenges (Mei et al., 2016 ). Several studies related the problems of learning Arabic in Malaysian context to various constraining factors. Researchers like Mustapha et al. (2017 ) and Maskor et al. (2016 ) associated the Malaysian students' poor performance in the Arabic language to teaching method approach used by teachers in teaching the students. They concluded that most of the teachers are using traditional methods of teaching in which students are less involved. On the other side some studies associated the problems to students' personality and attitudes towards learning Arabic as a foreign language (Ismail, 2008 ; Halim, 2009 ; Samah, 2012 ). Whereas others associate the problem with lack of adoptive learning strategies and awareness (Haron et al., 2010 ; Samah, 2015 ; bin Samah et al., 2016 ). Another challenge facing AFL undergraduate Malaysian learners are lacking exposure to the Arabic language. For the vast majority of the undergraduate students that are learning Arabic as a foreign language in Malaysia are lacking exposure towards Arabic language (bin Samah et al., 2016 ). The use of Arabic language for most of the students is confined to classroom whereas in sometimes lecturers are giving lectures, not in the target language but students' mother language. Because of the class time factors, vocabulary reinforcement is maybe one the causes of students' poor performance across the Arabic language skills. Henceforth, motivation has been considered as a major catalyst and driver of sustaining long-term and often laborious learning processes as well as the key to success in learning (Skehan, 1998 ).

Consequently, motivation especially intrinsic motivation plays an increasingly important role in learning foreign languages, it helps the teacher to decide greater language learning tasks for his students and helps students to achieve better performances. Hence, like of motivation may be one of the constraining factors to Malaysian undergraduate students' performance across the Arabic language skills. Thus, it could be argued that motivation has real influence on how foreign language learners learn language skills as Pinter (2017 ) reiterates that good motivation has a positive effect on foreign language learning. Few studies conducted in Malaysian context focus on motivation like the one conducted by Selvam et al. (2016 ) which investigate Malaysian motivation towards learning foreign languages in general not Arabic language in particular. Moreover, anxiety had long been regarded as a problematic area that need be diagnosed (Selvam et al., 2016 ). The striking anxiety issues in the context of foreign language learning may involve various elements such as ‘self-efficacy', ‘fear of criticism' lack of confidence, ‘poor history of performance achievement in language and so forth. That is to say, and anxiety had a negative impact on the students' performance (Santos et al., 2018 ). In addition to this, learning the Arabic language as a foreign language, Samah (2015 ) found that the majority of the students understand the Arabic grammar and vocabulary, but they cannot use it in their Arabic skills. This problem happens because of many factors. Among the factors are Malay students have no confidence in using Arabic language, lack of pedagogy in teaching Arabic language skills, the influence of the first language and so forth. Nevertheless, several studies confirmed that Malaysian undergraduate students are facing difficulties in learning the Arabic language across the skills as well as grammar and vocabulary despite the years they spent in learning the language (Haron, 2011 ; Rouyan, 2015 ; Zailaini et al., 2018 ). Furthermore, Sulaiman et al. (2017 ) found that most Malay Arabic language learners experienced problems in learning how to speak Arabic; their attainment of the skills was also very poor. The study further discovered that the problem is also due to poor conversational and interactive techniques between the teachers and students in the classrooms. Moreover, students are familiar with Arabic as they have learnt it at their former secondary schools for almost six years particularly those from religious or Arabic schools (Al-Sobhi et al., 2017 ). Even though the students have familiarity with the Arabic language for many years; many teachers are still not content with their students' achievement in the Arabic language. Moreover, Malay students lack self-confidence in using the Arabic language within and outside the classroom (Zailaini et al., 2018 ). Recent studies stated that the issues of learning difficulties are persisted among the Malaysian undergraduates despites efforts made by government policies and different models and approaches adopted by many researchers (Rahman, 2017 ; Alhirtani, 2018 ; Mohad et al., 2018 ; Zailaini et al., 2018 ).

It could be argued that most of the previous studies did not investigate the students' performance across the Arabic language skills in a cluster of Malaysian universities that offer Arabic program, which is important in two ways one it can help in knowing which skills that require more attention by both learners and lecturers, and secondly it allows for generation so that the language policy makers can use it in planning an intervention program. For instance, most of such studies like (Rajab et al., 2017 ) studies reading skill and concentrates more on reading strategies. Sulaiman et al. (2017 ) on the other hand studied speaking skills and concentrated more on the strategies of teaching Arabic speaking skills to AFL learners. Ibrahim et al. (2017 ) focus on the motivation of the Arabic language learning in general. Therefore, this study aims to determine the performance level of Malay undergraduate learners of Arabic as a foreign language at Malaysian public Islamic universities in listening and reading skills according to the standards of United Certification Services Limited UNICERT. The UniCert is an international organization of certification and authorization for various languages learnt in university background. The essential goal of UniCert is to support language education for universities and to offer an acknowledged certificate that attests language knowledge outside universities (Ruane, 2003 ).

1.2. Use of Web 2.0 Technology in Teaching and Learning Arabic Language

The rapid development of modern technological internet tools and pervasive development of social media sites are undergoing a profound transformation in the 21st century (Andriole et al., 2017 ). The W.W.W. sites have witnessed intense scrutiny and virtual changes with fast improvement of Social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Edmodo, you tube, Quiz Creator Online, and many others which marked a transition from web 1.0 to web 2.0. (Belk, 2014 ). It also refers to learning administration frameworks (LMSs) web 2.0, virtual learning condition (VLE) or course administration frameworks (CMS) (Conradie et al., 2014 ). The application of such technological tools in teaching and learning of a language is termed computer-assisted language learning. However, in Arabic language learning is not widely adopted.The world has realised the importance of having expertise in the foreign languages as an added advantage which becomes a vital in the world diplomatic strategies and for the purpose of accessing new technological inventions that come from different foreign countries. It is also crucially associated with the making of meaningful and constructive engagement in politics, security, global trade and education (Zubairi and Sarudin, 2009 ). Arabic in its distinctive varieties, is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. It is estimated to have more than 400 million people who speak it as a first language or official language in twenty-two countries and more than 250 million people who speak it as a second or foreign language (Bennett, 2017 ). The Arabic language is one of the foreign languages included in the Malaysian national curriculum as it was enshrined in Malaysian Education Development Plan (2013-2025) designed by Malaysian Ministry of Education (Joseph, 2017 ). Acquiring language skills is needed across all levels of education as they help students to communicate in a good and clear way which is unequivocal and unambiguous needed by all language learners to attain proficiency in language skills (Saville-Troike and Barto, 2016 ). Moreover, the students' performance in learning language is measured on those skills. Accordingly, their performance can be affected or positively impacted by various factors (Cohen, 2014 ). Many empirical studies indicate that Malay learners of Arabic as a foreign language have deficiencies in term of Arabic language skills as a result of various factors such as motivation L1 transfer, anxiety, lack of training or following proper strategies and so forth (Abdullah and Omar, 2016 ; Sahrir et al., 2016 ). Some studies associate the difficulties and challenges faced by both Malaysian teachers of Arabic language and Malay learners of Arabic language with the poor performance of students in the Arabic language skills (Mei et al., 2015 ). The Arabic language is used in Malaysian context for various purposes such as a medium of communication with non-Malaysian particularly tourists from the Arabian countries, tours expatriates, and official visitors. Arabic was initially introduced to Malaysia with the evolution of Islamic religion to Malaysian society in the 14th century (Arjomand, 2017 ). It is primarily used as a medium to propagate Islamic faith and to strengthen the understanding of the Islamic messages especially the Quran which is required to recite in five daily prayers in no any other language but Arabic language (Hamid, 2017 ).  Moreover, Barghi et al. (2017 ) assert that Malaysian Ministry of Education provides a provision to teach the Arabic language as a subject in the primary and secondary school levels. However, at tertiary institutions, there are quite a number of Malaysian universities both government and private universities that offer degrees in all categories of undergraduate, masters and doctorate degrees. It is a mandatory course for undergraduate students that read Islamic studies especially they are to learn four fundamental Arabic skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing– for the first two semesters in separate courses (Baharudin, 2017 ).  This study applied Error Analysis theory to determine the performance level of Malay undergraduate learners of Arabic as a foreign language in listening and reading skills. 

1.3. Performance in Arabic Skills among Malay Learners

There are a lot of studies done by second language researchers to explore and observe the problems faced by second language learners outside and inside Malaysian context. However, in learning Arabic as a foreign language, the studies are very rare, particularly in this aspect. Nevertheless, Maskor et al. (2016 ) mentioned various factors as the causes why reading is not encouraged by Malaysian culture as follow: work consumes their time, the impact of the environment, the prices of books which are measured expensive and the attitude or considering the reading as insignificant. Findings show that few in the Malaysian people are eager to read because they do not get pleasure from reading. This is because they assume that reading does not promote them in any way, when compared to other matters, additionally about time limitations due to the nature of their work. According to Samah (2015 ) the reading of additional books by undergraduate students in Malaysia is left far behind while compared to students of foreign countries, specifically, they read an average of only twelve books during three or four years of study. This indicates that most of the Malay students are very poor Arabic readers. The major factor which creates different tribulations to students in reading Arabic passage can be perceived in their intention for reading Arabic text (bin Samah et al., 2016 ). The stumpy percentage of students who read Arabic text for leisure indicates their actual attitude. The chance of escalating language ability and vocabulary by reading Arabic text during free time is merely disregarded or wasted (Ismail, 2008 ; Halim, 2009 ; Samah, 2012 ). Reading Arabic text is done only for certain or compulsory purposes such as making assignments or looking for answers. Mustapha et al. (2017 ) stated that most of the reasons mentioned above of reading Arabic text are correlated to the skills of reading comprehension. The reason for implementing rules of al-nahw and al-sarf (grammar) emerges to be unrelated to text understanding. It appears only to examine the sentence vowels-marked and the accurate pronunciation of every word in the text. Though, it is usually known that the reader's reason for the accurate pronunciation of word vowels-marked is to know the meaning of a sentence. Consequently, students are taught to use rules of al-nahw and al-sarf (grammar) while reading Arabic text to make sure they are capable of understanding better phrases and sentence arrangement. The stage of concern of the language skills, students in reading Arabic text and building reference to Arabic materials is still low (Sulaiman et al., 2017 ). The students are focusing on reading text connected to religion and their field of study. Even though this circumstance is very suitable for students of Islamic studies, but abandoning common reading materials will manipulate their understanding and attentiveness to face a more demanding external world. The most significant achievement is the restriction on their capability to understand a diverse linguistic index (Zailaini et al., 2018 ). A study conducted by Maskor et al. (2016 ) also shows that students’ lack of referring to customary books and current Arabic reference books is the causes of their failure in mastering the Arabic language skills. Upon asking the explanation for this occurrence, many excuses are given, such as lack of time, simply bored and tired, incapability to concentrate due to the noisy environment, difficulty in understanding the meaning of words or sentences, as well as difficulty in understanding Arabic text which is typically not vowel-marked. Nevertheless, there are also students who offer the reason for advancement and many words in the text are difficult. These reasons led them to be more tending to go for a shortcut, fast and safer according to their perceptions, that is, to refer to Malay reference books either originally written in Malay or translated from Arabic. The condition is difficult to the lazy attitude students to refer to a dictionary if words are unknown to them (Baharudin, 2017 ). This kind of experience is very disturbing to teachers and lecturers since the civilization of referring to translated books and Malay reference books will cause the superiority of future Arabic graduates to decline. Consequently, the graduates produced will be inexpert in reading Arabic text, superficial in their religious knowledge also not confident to convey knowledge since their knowledge was not originated from main sources. Although their excuse for not referring to traditional books is because of complexity in understanding the language (Sulaiman et al., 2017 ). However, it is not a suitable excuse for students. They should understand that something authentic and extremely valuable is surely difficult to attain. Moreover, Hamid (2017 ) stated that listening comprehension is extremely anxiety irritating particularly when the text is not understandable to the students. Students frequently felt anxious if listening in the target language because of many factors such as the legitimacy of the listening text, unknown or hard words used in the text, mysteriousness of the listening material because of the ecological factors such as accent, and students' lack of confidence in their listening ability (Zailaini et al., 2018 ).

2. METHOD

A quantitative method is utilized in this study. The sample of the study comprises 156 Malay undergraduate students that are learning Arabic as a foreign language at Malaysian public Islamic universities. These universities are Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UNISZA); International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM); and Islamic Science University of Malaysia (USIM). The students are in their final year of a bachelor of Arabic language, including 123 female 33 male. The data of the study were collected through test instrument designed and marked based on TOAFL (AL-ARABIA) scheme deployed into “QuizCreator Online". Prior to the class period, the facilitators designed a test on listening and reading skills using “QuizCreator Online" base on the "AL-ARABIA" marking scheme which was internationally accepted as a measure of assessing Arabic language skills (Norrbom and Al-Shamrani, 2017 ). All the participants were registered with “QuizCreator Online”. All tests were conducted at computer laboratories under the supervision of the researchers and two invigilators.The listening section of the test comprises of three parts: 1, in this part, Candidates listened to a short sentence and based on the sentence heard, they were required to answer the question. The question tests the understanding skills of the candidate; 2, Candidates listen to a short dialogue between two people, followed by a question to test their understanding of the dialogue; 3, this part consists of a long video clip that is similar to a lecture given by a speaker. It tests the candidates’ comprehension skills. While reading section, comprised three passages which were given to the students, they were required to read those passages and answer a few multiple-choice questions based on the reading and understanding of the material given. However, prior to taking the actual tests hands-on training of one hour was given to the participants.  All the questions are given in the Arabic language. Their performance in each skill is determined and automatically scored whereas the frequencies are calculated at the same time.

3. RESULTS

The results of this study are presented in table below:

Table-1. (Students’ scores in listening and reading skills)

	Reading	Listening
Total users	156	156
Unique users	156	156
Total questions	10	10
Full score	50 pts.	50 pts.
Passing score	25 pts.	25 pts.
Passing rate	50 %	50 %
Time limit	30:00 min	30:00 min
Average time taken	28: 00 min	27:00 min
Pass	46.7%	67.7%
Fail	53.3%	32.3%
Highest score	97.5%	100%
Lowest score	7.5%	5.0%

Pts. = Means points

Table 1.0 presented the performance of the students participated in this study based on the two receptive skills as scored and calculated in the “Quiz Creator Online”. As the results indicated that there are 156 participants registered for both tests. Out of those participants, 156 are regarded as unique users during the reading test as well as the listening test as they actively participated in the tests. The results also indicated that there are ten questions for each skill. Moreover, the marking scheme showed that there are 50 points whereas scoring 25 points is regarded as the passing benchmark score based on the TOAFL (AL-ARABIA) marking scheme which was equal to 50 % of the total scores. Furthermore, the result indicated that the participants were given 30 minutes to respond to 10 questions in each test.  Meanwhile, the time limit calculated is 28 minutes for reading skill test and 27 minutes for listening skill test. Henceforth, the results indicated that only 46.7% of the participants scored pass mark in reading skill test and 67.7% of the participants scored pass mark in listening skill test. In reverse case, 53.3% of the participants failed reading skill test, and 32.3% of the participants failed in listening skills test. Hence, the results revealed that the highest score in reading skills test is 97.5% and 100% in listening skills test, while the lowest score is 7.5% in reading skills test and 5.0% in listening skills test. The students’ scores reveal that students got lower scores in reading skill and higher scores in listening skill.

4. DISCUSSION

The results of this research can be supported by various empirical studies conducted with Malay students who are learning Arabic as a foreign language at different levels.  Such as the study conducted by Maskor et al. (2016 ) in which they indicated that major problem faced by Malay AFL learners lied about their lack of reading culture. In the same vein research conducted by Gharawi and Bidin (2016 ) stressed that the lack of practice was the core issue of the problems militating against learning of Arabic by Malay AFL learners. This was also confirmed by Omari (2016 ) who declared that the best environment for encouraging the use of foreign languages was unavailable in Malaysia. Moreover, in learning the Arabic language as a foreign language, Lim (2014 ) mentioned various factors as the causes why reading is not encouraged by Malaysian culture as follow: work consumes their time, the impact of the environment, and the attitude or considering the reading as insignificant.

5. CONCLUSION

This research concludes that the Malay Undergraduate Arabic learners are facing major challenges in receptive skills. And the results prove that students levels of performance in the receptive skills based on the international standard specifically, TOAFL (AL-ARABIA) are poor especially in reading skills. This kind of knowledge can contribute not only for the teaching of Arabic in the classroom but also to the Ministry of Education, particularly to language planners and writers in their decision-making. The research will also contribute to the research literature in the field of foreign Language Acquisition.This study recommends the use of web 2.0 tools such as Blogs, Edmodo, Facebook and QuizCreator Online tools in teaching and learning of Arabic language to Malay AFL learners. Listening and reading Arabic skills should be strictly examined at the university levels, especially at final year, because it may help to reflect the real capability of the learners in the Arabic language. Students should be motivated to listen and read as much as possible in the Arabic language, particularly for their desire. The present research can be replicated, either at the same level with many students or at different levels, to prove the results which have been proven in this research.

Funding: This study received no specific financial support.

Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Contributors/Acknowledgement: We would like to thank Faculty of Languages and Communication of Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences of International Islamic University Malaysia and Faculty of Major Languages Studies of Islamic Science University of Malaysia, for giving us the permission to conduct this tests in their computer laboratory. We also thank the participating students for actively responding to the questions and maintaining the order during the test.

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