Development of the E-Muhadatsah Kit for Non-Arabic Speakers in Malaysian Institutions of Higher Learning: A Need Analysis

Needs analysis plays an important role in the development of a product to ensure that the product can meet the needs of consumers. The development of the E-Muhadatsah kit or Arabic conversation kit based on an android application is a self-communication platform among non-Arabic speakers in Malaysian Institutions of Higher Learning. This study aims to identify the need for developing the E-Muhadatsah kit among non-Arabic speakers at the tertiary level as well as to identify the level of interest in Arabic speaking, Arabic communication confidence, and students' willingness to communicate in Arabic. The assignment and exercise needs in improving students’ Arabic speaking or communication skills were also identified. A set of questionnaires was distributed to 214 respondents from universities in Malaysia namely UPM, UPSI, UniSZA, and UiTM. Then, the data obtained from the administration of the questionnaire were analyzed using SDSS version 25 software and interpreted based on the analysis of mean scores and standard deviations. Meanwhile, the open-ended questionnaire data were analyzed thematically. The results showed that respondents saw the development of the E-Muhadatsah kit as a great need for non-Arab students in higher education. In addition, the study also found that respondents showed a high interest in Arabic speaking, confidence in Arabic communication, and students' willingness to communicate in Arabic at a high level. Thus, this study proposes the development of a conversation-based Arabic language interactive multimedia kit to improve the communication proficiency of non-Arabic speakers, further able to help Arabic language educators to diversify multimedia-assisted teaching methods

Semantics in MH17 tragedy newspaper news

This study is an observation of the use of semantic elements to online newspaper news about the plane crash that has claimed many lives, namely the MH17 Tragedy. The important purpose is to look at the problem of ambiguity of meaning that occurs. In addition, this study also explains the use of semantic elements in newspaper news that can cause changes in the original meaning according to the context of the sentence used. as the main source of information. This study focuses primarily on semantics in online newspaper news by using structural semantic theory approach by (Katz, 1972). This theory emphasizes the meaning of each word based on the sentence used. To achieve that goal, the study was based on identifying semantics and newspaper news. Next make a comparison between the newspaper and describe the semantic meaning in the newspaper news. Through this study, the researcher has used two main newspapers, namely Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia. A total of 14 newspapers were used as study data, namely seven newspapers were from Berita Harian and seven more were from Utusan Malaysia. Next, the researcher only selected six newspapers to explain the meaning, namely three newspapers from Berita Harian and three more from Utusan Malaysia