Malaysian University Students’ Comprehension on the Text of Arabic Literature Kalilah Wa Dimnah

Abstract

The importance of Arabic literature whether prose or poetry makes it one of the main subjects in the bachelor's degree curriculum among public universities in Malaysia. Students' comprehension of Arabic literary texts is very important as by understanding said literature, they are able to deepen their heights of understanding towards the Quranic language and appreciate the history and culture of the Arabic. If the problem of comprehensibility of Arabic literary texts cannot be overcome, it will result in the mastery of the Arabic language not being fully achieved. The main purpose of this study is to measure the level of students' comprehension of Arabic literary texts of the prose quoted from the book Kalilah wa Dimnah. The study is a quantitative study involving 109 undergraduate students from International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM). This quantitative study used Text Comprehension Tests to obtain data. The obtained data were analysed descriptively to determine the level of students' comprehension of the text. Findings showed that the level of students' comprehension of Arabic prose literary texts is at a moderate level. This study suggests that further research on the causes of students' level of comprehension of literary texts can be conducted so that this problem can be overcome in the future.