PROBLEMS OF TEACHING ARABIC LANGUAGE IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS
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- NGN 5000
Background Of The Study
Because learning a language is both a scientific process and an activity that is centered on the learner, a broad variety of teaching-learning activities need to be created. However, due to a variety of impediments, the teaching of Arabic as a language in Nigeria is not as successful as it may be. Arabic has a long history of usage in Nigeria's liturgical context and continues to be studied there primarily for academic reasons as well. The study of Arabic for the purpose of communication has not received as much attention as the study of Arabic for religious and academic purposes, which are the two most common uses of the language. Because of this, the graduates' capabilities are restricted to functioning as Arabists only inside the borders of Nigeria. This, of course, limits their employability.
Even though the vast majority of students in Damaturu Local Government Area of Yobe State who are learning Arabic as a second language are exposed to the language in the form of prayer and recitation from the time they are born, very few of them achieve a level of communicative competence that is considered to be satisfactory. Although students are supposed to be able to fluently recite from the Qur'an by the age of eight and are taught to conduct ritualistic prayer in Arabic as part of their daily exposure with the language, they are unable to speak properly in Arabic or even comprehend what they hear (Majid, 2017). Bowker has also recognized the existence of this issue (2015). However, he claims that while comprehension is essential, there is a virtue in Islam in reciting the Qur'an for its own sake; there may be worth in it entirely separate from concerns about comprehension. He says this despite the fact that understanding is essential (Bowker 2015). This viewpoint is in contrast to the prevalent techniques in language education that place a focus on students' ability to absorb and comprehend the material. According to Bowker (2015), the First World Conference on Muslim Education was held in 1977. At this conference, the Arabic language was emphasized as the key to the understanding of the divine revelation presented in the Quran and Sunna, and the teaching of Arabic was mandated to be a required subject for all Muslim students. The concept that one must be fluent in Arabic in order to comprehend the meaning of the Qur'an and the belief that it is beneficial to recite the Qur'an just for the purpose of doing so are both connected to the problem of Islamization. Al-Attas is credited as being the first person to formally articulate this idea (2013). Islamization (the word was formed analogous to Westernization) is the liberation of man from magical, mythological, animistic, national-cultural tradition, and then from secular control over his reason and his language. This liberation occurs in the same way that Westernization freed man from traditional cultural bounds (Al-Attas 2013). The Arabic language itself, along with all of the other non-Arabic languages spoken by peoples that identify as Muslim, has not been spared from the Islamization process. This indicates that Arabic, as the language of the Qur'an, should accurately reflect the original message. There should be no room for '... learned guess or conjecture, no room for interpretation based upon subjective readings, or understandings based merely upon the idea of historical relativism as if semantic change had occurred in the conceptual structures of the words and terms that make up the vocabulary of the sacred text,' according to this interpretation. Al-Attas (2013) suggests that one should exercise continual vigilance in order to recognize incorrect language usage, the likes of which may lead to a general misunderstanding and inaccuracy in one's understanding of Islam and the worldview that it espouses. In addition to this, he says that the Arabic language should be returned to its religious context (Al-Attas 2013). This argument stands in contrast to the concept of communicative competence in the teaching of foreign languages, which places the emphasis on the learner's capacity to use the language effectively in a variety of settings in order to send and receive messages that are suitable to those settings.
According to Allen (Mohamed 2017), the texts that are used in the instruction of the Arabic language have proven effective in promoting reading, but they do not represent actual reading ability since they do not promote understanding. When reading Arabic, the vast majority of students are doing what is known as "barking at print," which means that they read aloud and may read quite fluently, but they do not comprehend the content of the message that is written down (Wessels & Van den Berg 2016). Even though the development of receptive skills (reading and comprehending) is the primary emphasis of Arabic instruction at the present time, these abilities are not being gained as efficiently as they should be. The majority of people who are fluent in Arabic as a second language did not learn it via formal education. Instead, they picked it up on their own outside of formal settings. A number of these people have learned Arabic in Muslim seminaries in South Africa, while others have picked it up while traveling to other countries and acquiring it there (see also Mohamed 2017). This lends credence to the idea that the instructional approach used by schools might be the root cause of this conundrum. According to Mohammed (2017), despite the efforts to change to communicative Arabic, examinations at schools are still based on the grammar-translation method, and it appears that teachers prepare their learners for this type of assessment. This is despite the fact that there have been efforts to change to communicative Arabic. In light of the points raised above, the purpose of this research is to investigate the challenges that are presented by the instruction of Arabic language in junior secondary schools.
1.2 Statement Of The Problem
The instruction of Arabic as a language in junior secondary schools has been hampered by a wide variety of and an overwhelming number of obstacles. According to what Amed(2015) has noticed over the course of many years, many instructors of languages (Arabic and English) at different Muslim schools in Yobe State lack communicative competence and have poor proficiency levels in all four language skills. There are a lot of Arabic language teachers who are aware of this issue that exists, and there have been a lot of discussions about it at teacher seminars, workshops, and professional development programs over the years. Despite all of these discussions, the issue has not been seriously addressed, and there have not been any plans of action put into place. Since the introduction of Arabic into secondary education, insufficient methods of teaching the language have caused students to withdraw from the subject while they are in the senior secondary phase of their education (Ebrahim 2016). Students who have studied Arabic in a classroom setting for a number of years frequently demonstrate a deficit in their ability to actually use the language and understand how it is used in everyday communication. This is true regardless of whether the instruction was delivered orally or in written form. Because it seems that the issue is with the method of teaching Arabic, what is required is a change in the focus of attention, moving it away from the grammatical aspects of the language and toward the communicative properties of the language. Based on the aforementioned, the purpose of this research is to shed light on the difficulties associated with the instruction of Arabic in junior secondary schools.
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