Arabic Language Production: Challenges for Indonesian Adult and

Children Learners

Miftachul Afif Abduh

, Mustaufir

, Rohmani Nur Indah

Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang, Indonesia

Keywords: Arabic learners; language production; learning difficulties

Abstract: Many learners of foreign language face difficulties in the process of language acquisition. They are required

to study his second language seriously and passionately, but in practice there are many obstacles or

difficulties encountered during the process of language production. They may encounter some difficulty in

writing/speaking or reading/listening. The purpose of this study is to identify and explore the difficulties in

the production process of Arabic. The study uses descriptive methods and collects data through direct

techniques, namely: observing and interviewing the learners in the learning process. It identifies stages in

which learners find learning difficulties in both composing perfect sentences and understanding Arabic

speech. These difficulties occur when learners are at the beginning of learning Arabic as a foreign language.

Children beginner learner face difficulty in the message stage, while adult beginner learners think that the

difficulty occurs in the functional stage.

1 INTRODUCTION

Language is a means of communication between

members of society in the form of sound symbols

produced by human utensils. Language itself is often

likened to as a means of formulating intentions and

expressing individual feelings to regulate various

group activities (Subini, 2012). Most people learn

more than one language to meet various

communication needs.

Language is the process of communicating the

language. The language process itself requires

thoughts and feelings that are carried out by the

human brain to produce words or sentences.

Theoretically the language process begins with

semantic encoding, grammatical encoding and

phonological encoding. "Semantic encoding and

grammatical encoding" takes place in the brain,

while "phonological encoding" starts from the brain

and then continues its implementation by means of

speech that involves the brain's talking nervous

system (Rusmaji, 1995). The three codes are related

to one's language production activities which are

also closely related to the relationship between the

brain and the speech organs of a person.

According to Clement (in Weiner, 2003)

learning difficulties can result in incompetence or

obstacles in the process of perception,

conceptualization, language, memory, and

concentration of attention, and others. If at an early

stage learning difficulty can be overcome, a number

of other consequences can be prevented. Including

in learning the language, there are times when

students encounter difficulties that interfere with the

process of acquiring the language. If it is not

resolved early, it is possible to inhibit the process of

language acquisition and the maturation of target

language acquisition (Harwell, 2001). Even this will

result in a decrease in motivation to obtain the

targeted language.

When learning takes place sometimes a

second language student will find language

difficulties unconsciously, because in learning they

are required to understand the language and recite

the language with sound. In this case the language or

speech production expressed requires the right set of

words in its delivery (Wardani, 1995). Language

difficulties have some scope such as recognizing the

characteristics of language construction, recognizing

functions in the community framework, and

language skills.

Abduh, M., Mustauﬁr, . and Indah, R.

Arabic Language Production: Challenges for Indonesian Adult and Children Learners.

DOI: 10.5220/0009916607670772

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Recent Innovations (ICRI 2018), pages 767-772

ISBN: 978-989-758-458-9

767

Learning a second language, especially Arabic

often results in good language difficulties in reading,

listening, writing and speaking skills. These four

aspects are closely related and cannot be separated

from each other. In the beginning of learning a

student still mixes his mother tongue with his second

language, whether in the composition of the

sentence or using the original intonation, clearly or

vaguely.

Language and stage difficulties are a

phenomenon of difficulty in language or speech

production often occured. Therefore, language

difficulties need to be studied in depth. Because

every human being has difficulty in producing his

language, the two are different, some can express

language from the beginning and some can not

express language from the beginning, he begins to

express it after a few months or years of learning.

Studies on the difficulties in learning Arabic

by Indonesian students have been done (Nawir,

2014), but in the context of learning Arabic in

general in Indonesia there has not been much

research on the difficulties of the production process

of Arabic. Arabic learners find difficulties in the

production of language. Furthermore, this study will

examine what difficulties children and adult learners

face in learning Arabic as a foreign language in

Indonesia.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Language Production

Production is the process of issuing results or

making outputs, while utterance is a sentence that is

spoken. So, speech production is a process that

produces spoken sentences as expressions of the

mind and feeling of the speaker. There are four steps

in speech production:

First: the level of the message, i.e. the message

delivered will be processed, for example:

Muhammad is teaching Ahmad, from the sentence a

message can be taken. First: Muhammad was a

teacher, both Muhammad was teaching his students,

third Ahmad was a student taught by Muhammad.

Second: the functional level, that is, the lexical

form is chosen and then becomes a role and given a

syntactic function, as in the example: Muhammad is

teaching Ahmad, then Muhammad is as a subject

and Ahmad as an object.

Third: the positional level, which is the stage

of forming constituents and affixation, this is a

process of sorting lexical forms that aim to give

hierarchical meaning. For example in the sentence

Muhammad was teaching Ahmad. In the utterance

words are formed to be meaningful, while affixation

is done to distinguish meaning between active or

passive.

Fourth: the level of philology, which is to

form the phonological structure of speech, the

sounds of the sentence are sounded correctly not

back and forth (Dardjowidjojo, 2008). Suppose the

word Muhammad in the sentence Muhammad is

teaching ahmad not to be reversed which will result

in incomprehension.

The details of speech or language production

are as follows:

The first type is discourse production

planning, In this stage of the discourse is divided

into two, namely a dialogue and monologue, the

fundamental difference in the two discourses lies in

the process of intrusion between the speaker and

listener. In the dialogue discourse there are two

actors, namely the speaker and the one who is

invited to speak, while in the monologue discourse

there is only one actor. If the discourse is an oral

discourse, then there is one speaker, if the writing is

one writer.

The second type is sentence production, at this

stage there are some processes, namely:

 Propositional content. In this stage the speaker

determines what proposition he wants to state.

 Illocutionary charge. Here, the speaker

determines the meaning and form to be conveyed

and the method chosen. In this charge there are

several factors, namely: social position,

differences in age, kinship, and degree of

familiarity between the speaker and the person

invited to speak.

 Thematic structure. It is related to the

grammatical or semantic function in the

sentence.

After completing the sentence production

planning process, it is continued at the third level

namely constituent production planning

(Dardjowidjojo, 2008). At this stage the right word

is chosen according to the will. Maybe if the referent

is a woman he likes then choose the word sweet, but

if he is a person who is hated then the word cheap is

chosen.

Fourth type: articulation program. After the

word is chosen, an articulatory program is formed

which is summarized into one planned constituency

at once.

Fifth type: articulation. The final step is to

convey or execute the contents of the articulatory

program, in accordance with the desired

ICRI 2018 - International Conference Recent Innovation

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conversation. Noteworthy is the misunderstanding

that speaking is the opposite of hearing. This does

not mean that the listener always blurts out what he

hears. Listeners process messages to then take on the

role of speakers that produce sounds that turn into

meaning. This is in accordance with the intonation

and how to convey the contents of the conversation.

2.2 Stages of Language Difficulties

Difficulties are things that can cause problems or

disturbances in producing language, or something

that the problem cannot be solved (KBBI, 1990). A

difficulty is also a condition that shows the

characteristics of obstacles in activities to achieve

goals so that a better effort is needed to overcome

and resolve the disorder. Interference or difficulty in

language is closely related to disorders or diseases

that cause communication disorders (Indah, 2017).

Therefore, if the language user experiences

interference, the communication is interrupted.

Every child has a difference in thinking

maturity, intelligence and language skills. Therefore,

children in speaking, listening, reading or writing are

not the same or different. It may be that he is smart

in speaking but he is weak in pouring his thoughts

into writing. Or he is good at pouring his ideas in

written form, but he is weak in pouring them in the

form of utterances (Djamarah, 2008).

Although each child has the ability to learn

Arabic, their ability to capture learning varies. There

are stages of difficulty experienced by each child in

learning Arabic, because they learn a second

language from the mother tongue.

At the beginner stage, a child who is just

learning Arabic will have difficulty speaking words

in Arabic, this is because he finds a new language in

his life that is very different from the original

language. As time goes by he will begin to

memorize and understand how to pronounce words

in Arabic. For example, say the letter j in Indonesian

and the letter

ج in Arabic, and so on.

On the intermediate stage, the difficulty of the

children again leveled in terms of forming and

arranging words into sentences, because of the

differences that occur in how to compose sentences

in Indonesian into Arabic. For example, in the

example: I go to school every day, so in the

production of language can be reversed in its

preparation.

In the adult stage, a student already knows

both words and sentences in Arabic but he is still not

fluent in discussing due to lack of speaking habits in

speaking in Indonesian, so he still often exchanges

with each other (Arsyad, 2003). There are two

factors that cause children's difficulties in learning

Arabic, namely: internal factors and external factors

of children.

Internal factors are factors of age, health and

intelligence of children. The age of the child will

affect the level of difficulty, because then he has

increased experience and level of need. Child’s

health is also one of the factors of children's

difficulties in learning Arabic. Healthy children and

good nutrition are faster in language development

than children who experience health problems.

Every child will definitely have different levels of

intelligence, those who have normal intelligence

tend to quickly develop their language. (Chaer,

2003).

The external factors are family relationships,

community environment and first language. The

process of interaction relations in a family

environment that is not used to speaking in Arabic.

The community environment is also a factor in the

development of a language for children (Faldy,

2018), because their hearing and vision are different

between Arabic and the everyday language they

learn. In addition, linguists generally agree that the

first language has a major influence on the mastery

of the second language (Chaer, 2003). Therefore

every child allows different abilities in language,

especially learning Arabic which is influenced by

mother tongue.

3 METHOD

In this study a qualitative descriptive approach was

used because researchers tried to describe the

difficulty of producing a second language for

beginner learners, so that the data to be collected in

the study was descriptive in that it was about

difficulties in the production of language for second

language learners.

While this type of research uses naturalistic

methods, naturalistic methods are used in natural

places, and researchers do not make treatment,

because researchers in collecting data are emic, that

is based on the views of data sources, not the views

of researchers (Sugiyono, 2014). This type is used

because the data collection is based on the views of

data sources such as interviews with the intended

students, both children and adults.

In qualitative research that is the instrument or

research tool is the researcher itself. Furthermore,

research instruments use observation and interviews.

The steps used in this study are: first, analyzing

Arabic Language Production: Challenges for Indonesian Adult and Children Learners

769

problems related to reading, writing, listening and

speaking skills. Second, discuss the results of the

analysis. Third, conclude and describe the problem.

Fourth: report the results of the study.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Based on the division of the structure of children's

language in terms of aspects phonological

acquisition, the In this study, several different

samples were taken, including: the ages of children

and adults who all had different backgrounds. Each

sample the author mentioned above is a beginner

learner who does not yet have an Arabic base.

First, those representing the age of the

children were observed in Arabic lessons in 7th

grade junior high school in Bojonegoro, Indonesia

and interviewed the students. The results of

observations indicate that there are some difficulties

in students in the production of the second language,

namely Arabic. This is supported by many factors,

including the lack of teacher competency in the easy

way of learning Arabic. Teacher competencies

include inadequacy to root Arabic at the basic level.

The way the teacher teaches as well as teaching

students who are already proficient in the production

of Arabic.

Based on observations, it seems that the

Arabic language acquisition is not optimal due to

limited time to learn Arabic in class. Considering

that the school chosen as the research sample is a

public high school, the proportion of hours of Arabic

language lessons is not as much as Indonesian. Lack

of exposure in Arabic will make it difficult for

students to have the opportunity to produce speech

in Arabic. Moreover, the number of students in one

class is also less proportional to basic level Arabic

learning. This causes each student not to have

sufficient opportunities to practice language

production in the context of training in speaking or

dialogue in Arabic.

During observation, there was a lack of

motivation of children in learning Arabic. The

classroom situation shows the teacher centric rather

than the active participation of students. Moreover,

this is supported by a lack of awareness in practicing

Arabic in daily communication. Students' motivation

in Arabic does not support active learning which is

needed in prompting learners to produce utterances

in Arabic independently during the learning process

takes place in the classroom.

Not a few foreign language teachers,

especially Arabic, still rely on traditional learning

models such as Grammar Translation Method. This

is not only commonly found in Arabic classes in

Indonesia but also in other countries such as Japan

(Sumi, 2010). However, learning with this

traditional model does not always match the needs

of learners, let alone students in the beginner stage.

The interview results show that students are

not interested in learning Arabic. One student

explained: "In the beginning of learning Arabic, it

was difficult, even to understand certain vocabulary,

I needed a picture or a direct demonstration. For

example, the teacher uses gestures to explain. And I

also need an interpreter when the teacher is speaking

in Arabic. I really want to express a desire or

communication with others in Arabic conversation

but very difficult.

It can be understood from the child's answer

that when a person, especially a child who has just

learned a foreign language, must find a very striking

difference in terms of how to read it, speak, so that

the process of understanding is also a bit late. The

production process is supported by the language

acquisition process maximally. This is because the

awareness of the speech sound in the second

language is influenced by a mother tongue (Chiang,

2003; Nasution, 2013).

Basically, children have maximized their

efforts in understanding Arabic through non-verbal

support such as the use of gestures and other media

by relating it to their mother tongue. Even in mother

tongue, young age child is still developing their

phonological awareness (Maharany, 2016;

Nurjamiaty, 2015; Yuliawan, 2016; Wulandari,

2018’ Eviyanti, 2008). Therefore, when he will

produce Arabic he also needs the same tools to

facilitate his speech. But because of the difficulties

that prevent students from maximizing their Arabic

production efforts. They will develop more

difficulties when he learns further phonological

production of the target language until adulthood

(Jabbour, 2014).

Teaching Arabic to foreign speakers as

reported from another study, is also influenced by

several factors such as teacher and student

characteristics, learning models, and the use of

learning media (Basma, 2014). From this it is clear

that the ability of teachers to adapt learning models

that are appropriate to the characteristics of

children's learning and children's needs such as their

interests and desire, has not supported the process of

language acquisition. Of course, this will have an

impact on production difficulties in the target

language, namely Arabic.

ICRI 2018 - International Conference Recent Innovation

770

Secondly, those who represent adulthood are

sampled from IKIP Bojonegoro students. According

to one student, it is said "Arabic language, especially

studying qowa'id nahwu shorof is a problem for me.

More specifically for beginners who want to learn

Arabic speech writing or translating mother tongue

into Arabic, they will find challenges in writing or

translating them. This is because every sentence of

the texts has a different place or position. But I did

not find it difficult at the beginning of the study,

because I had memorized some good vocabulary

from nouns or verbs. I started having difficulties for

about a month since I started learning Arabic."

From this statement, it is very clear that for

adult learners the production of Arabic has a

different level of complexity than other language

difficulties because each language has its own

articulation difficulties. The other students also

expressed a different reason, "For me this certainly

presents its own challenges, especially as I am a

beginner who wants to learn to speak and write in

Arabic. Arabic vocabulary such as nouns or verbs is

easier to learn and practice by adults because all

vocabulary words have nothing in common with

other vocabulary words. However, the difficulty is

caused by the absence of habituation to write in

Arabic or accustomed to but never speaking Arabic"

From the results of interviews with adult

learner respondents above, there is a complexity of

Arabic language production difficulties that enter the

semantic encoding and grammatical encoding

stages. This is slightly different from the difficulty

of language production in children who are more

dominated by the difficulty of the perception process

and language conceptualization stages. In other

words, the difficulty of producing Arabic in the

beginner learning of children is at the message stage.

As for adult beginner learners, the difficulty occurs

in the functional stage.

For adult learners, the difficulty of producing

Arabic is not influenced by low motivation factors

as found in children's learners. The same thing is

found in students who study Arabic in other Asian

countries such as Japan. The desire to communicate

and improve Arabic production skills actively

including high, only constrained due to difficulties

in the production formulation (Sumi, 2010, 2012).

In adult learners, difficulties in the functional

stage can be caused by an imbalance between the

number of receptive vocabulary and productive

vocabulary. Similar to the results of research on

learning Arabic in the UK, the number of vocabulary

that must be mastered, including the pronunciation

method, is one of the learning difficulties that

inhibits the fluency of Arabic production (Teaching

Arabic, 2016).

5 CONCLUSION

Based on the findings of this study, there are several

factors underlying difficulties in pronouncing the

phoneme of hijaiyah letters both from the age of

children, to adults. Among them is due to the

differences between the mother tongue and the

second language and the composition of Arabic is

different from the arrangement of mother tongue. In

addition, the culture of the native language or

mother tongue is different from the second language

to learn. It is also supported by the lack of learner

competency towards understanding and habituating

Arabic conversation. It is also reported that another

factor is limited time availability in second language

learning (Arabic) both in formal and non-formal

environments and also lack of motivation of learners

in learning this second language. Most of them

assume that Arabic is not used too much among

intellectuals or international conferences. Arabic is

assumed to be enough to be used in religious

elements such as prayer, reading al quran or prayer,

so that they are not confident when learning and

communicating in Arabic.

Apart from the factors described above, it turns

out that the difficulty stage encountered by learners

from children and adults has a difference. In children

it turns out that the difficulty stage encountered in

learning Arabic is on vocabulary, how to read it or

the shahof because it is very different from the

mother tongue. While adult learners did not

encounter difficulties at the beginning in learning

this second language, because he already had several

vocabulary memorized and learned in the past.

However, he began to encounter difficulties in his

second language production process in the middle

stage of learning, because at this stage he started

practicing the language and constructing the

composition of the sentences. The second language

begins to appear different, as in Indonesian it is

usually the subject first then predicate, but in Arabic

the predicate comes first then the subject. At this

stage he starts to understand the meaning and its

translation because translating Arabic cannot be

rigid, but must pay attention to conformity in his

mother tongue, serta harus memperhatikan konteks

kalimatnya.

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771

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