STUDENTS’ ACTIVE ROLES IN ARABIC LANGUAGE DEBATE ACTIVITIES IN NDUM

Students’ interest in learning Arabic as a foreign language is an important aspect that has to be addressed by language instructors. By addressing this affective factor, they will be able to cater the needs of the students, particularly in selecting relevant activities that suit the students’ abilities and at the same time comply with the syllabus. This study explores the students' interest in learning Arabic using debates. It also intends to investigate the challenges faced and efforts made by students in the process of learning Arabic through debates. This is a single case study involving ten participants consisting of National Defence University of Malaysia (NDUM) students from diverse backgrounds. The participants were interviewed, with the sessions recorded and saved in MP3 audio format. The interviews were then transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically. The findings show that on the whole, the students have good interest in learning Arabic language through roleplay activities, but there are various challenges experienced by the students in the learning process. For example, the insufficiency of the vocabulary to express their ideas and the need to always translate it first. They also get demoralised when interacting with more fluent and proficient speakers. Despite these challenges, they demonstrated a persistent and satisfied effort as they feel like they are being challenged to be better while achieving the objective of the activity. This study provides some pedagogical recommendations in terms of prepping students with communicative function activities such as debates with several guidelines, particularly for minimising the constraints of students with basic Arabic language experience.