THE USE OF PEER LEARNING STRATEGY AMONG ARABIC LANGUAGE COURSE STUDENTS AT UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MARA (UiTM)

The Arabic course at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Malaysia is an elective offered to first degree students. This study is aimed to investigate the use of peer learning strategy among students in learning oral Arabic at UiTM. It is a mixed method of quantitative and qualitative study using a questionnaire adapted from The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) and interviews. The quantitative data were collected from 445 samples using the stratified random sampling technique. Meanwhile, the qualitative data were collected by conducting 13 interview sessions with students. Overall, the study found that the use of this strategy among students was high. Further investigations on subcomponents of this strategy found that it was highly used in grouping activities. However, the level of students readiness to provide explanations and to spend their time to discuss the course subjects during group discussions was moderate. This study suggested some improvements in learning oral Arabic in UiTM such as using peer assistants which could be officially selected among students themselves in learning oral Arabic.