--- title: "Measuring Malaysian Students Achievement Level in Arabic Morphology — Sidiq 2020" description: "The study asks how well Malaysian learners of Arabic master core morphology. 10 references." authors: ["Yasin Mohamed Yasin M. Sidiq", "Hassan Mohamed Doka", "Mauidlotun Nisa", "Kawakib Elnour Osman"] year: 2020 venue: "Buletin Al-Turas 26" source: "http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/al-turats/article/view/15114" doi: "10.15408/bat.v26i2.15114" licence: "CC BY-SA (journal licence per DOAJ; Buletin Al-Turas)" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/sidiq-2020-measuring-malaysian-students-achievement-level/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/sidiq-2020-measuring-malaysian-students-achievement-level/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2020](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2020/page/6/) / Measuring Malaysian Students Achievement Level in Arabic Morphology: Improving and Developing Curriculum # Measuring Malaysian Students Achievement Level in Arabic Morphology: Improving and Developing Curriculum **Authors:** Yasin Mohamed Yasin M. Sidiq, Hassan Mohamed Doka, Mauidlotun Nisa and Kawakib Elnour Osman · **Year:** 2020 · **Venue:** Buletin Al-Turas 26 · **Licence:** CC BY-SA (journal licence per DOAJ; Buletin Al-Turas) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.15408/bat.v26i2.15114) · [PDF](https://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/al-turats/article/download/15114/7592) · [DOI 10.15408/bat.v26i2.15114](https://doi.org/10.15408/bat.v26i2.15114) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W3083278368) **Citations:** 1 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) ## Summary The study asks how well Malaysian learners of Arabic master core morphology. It also tests whether three background factors explain differences in achievement: how long students studied Arabic before entering university, their gender, and their field of specialization. No standardized morphology test existed, so the authors built their own objective test. Topics were drawn from an analysis of the assigned textbooks and weighted by their share of the material. A panel of about forty specialists in Arabic teaching, education, measurement and statistics vetted the test for validity. The test was administered in Kuala Lumpur to students of IIUMC, the matriculation center run by the International Islamic University. Each factor turned out to matter: - Newcomers did well mainly on pairing the (Anita) prefix letters with pronouns and on conjugating sound, hamzated and assimilated past-tense verbs. - Students with 5–7 years of prior study also handled hollow verbs. - Female students outperformed males almost across the board. - Arabic majors outscored other majors. The authors turn these results into curriculum recommendations, giving a diagnostic basis for redesigning morphology teaching for non-native learners. ## Key points - Field study at IIUMC, Kuala Lumpur. The independent variables were prior years of Arabic study, gender and specialization (Arabic, English, Sharia, Humanities, Revealed Knowledge). - The instrument was self-made: - Part one collected background data on each student. - Part two held objective short-answer items, covering topics in proportion to the textbooks. - About 40 experts reviewed it; items were edited or dropped based on their consensus. - Strengths by verb type: - Weak verb classes separated the groups: hollow (ajwaf), assimilated (mithal) and hamzated (mahmuz) verbs. - Agreement of the (Anita) prefix letters with pronouns also differentiated the groups. - Verbs beginning with Ta' were the exception to the female advantage. - Arabic majors showed statistically significant advantages over other majors, with reported p-values such as 0.000, 0.021 and 0.009. - The authors recommend the following: - a communicative approach and gradual progression; - focus on the most frequent morphological forms; - teaching grammar through meaning; - reconciling teaching methods and long-term spiral planning of material; - knowledge-sharing bridges between institutions. ## Interesting ideas - Short-answer items were preferred over essays because essays let test-takers sidestep forms they don't know (an "avoidance strategy"), which hides weaknesses. - Test content was weighted by how much space each topic takes in the source textbooks, so the test measures what was actually taught. - A broad expert panel reviewed each item for relevance and clarity before use, pruning items that did not measure the intended skill. - Results were broken down by fine morphological class (sound, hollow, assimilated, hamzated verbs; pronoun agreement), exposing exactly where performance drops. - The authors recommend teaching the most frequent morphological patterns first and introducing rules through meaning. ## For Mova How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests: - **I1** (answer): School-course tests for Mova should force a specific produced form or answer rather than free text, so gaps in comprehension cannot be masked by fluent but evasive output. - **I2** (learn): Evaluation sets could be stratified by the frequency of each construction in the training or target corpora, so that scores reflect real coverage instead of over-representing rare phenomena. - **I3** (learn): Benchmark items, including negative controls, could be screened by several independent judges, human or LLM teacher tiers, with removal of items they disagree on, which improves the validity of the evaluation. - **I4** (tokens): Lemmatizer and morphology errors in crate en could be reported per inflection class (irregular past forms, -y/-ies alternations, doubled consonants), pointing repair rules at the weakest paradigms. - **I5** (tokens): Morphological rules could be prioritized and ordered by corpus frequency, with each rule tied to its semantic effect (tense, number, person), keeping the tagger explainable and focused where it pays off most. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* Fields: [Linguistics & languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/linguistics/) Topics: [🧩 Morphology](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/morphology/) · [🐪 Semitic languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/semitic-languages/) ## Institutions - [Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/syarif-hidayatullah-state-islamic-university-jakarta/) — University, Ciputat, Indonesia · 2 works · 1 citation ## Cite Cite as: Yasin Mohamed Yasin M. Sidiq, Hassan Mohamed Doka, Mauidlotun Nisa and Kawakib Elnour Osman. 2020. Measuring Malaysian Students Achievement Level in Arabic Morphology: Improving and Developing Curriculum. Buletin Al-Turas 26. The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{sidiq2020measuring, title = {{Measuring Malaysian Students Achievement Level in Arabic Morphology: Improving and Developing Curriculum}}, author = {Yasin Mohamed Yasin M. Sidiq, Hassan Mohamed Doka, Mauidlotun Nisa and Kawakib Elnour Osman}, booktitle = {Buletin Al-Turas 26}, year = {2020}, doi = {10.15408/bat.v26i2.15114}, url = {https://doi.org/10.15408/bat.v26i2.15114} } ``` - [← previous Identifying and Handling Cross-Treebank Inconsistencies in UD: A Pilot Study](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/donicke-2020-identifying-handling-cross-treebank-inconsistencies/) - [next → Neural Computing for Online Arabic Handwriting Character Recognition using Hard Stroke Features Mining](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/rehman-2020-neural-computing-online-arabic-handwriting/) - [↑ back to papers of 2020](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2020/page/6/) ## References 10 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Abdalla, A. E. (1996). An error analysis of the written Arabic of Malay students. [Ph.D thesis]. University of Malaya. 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