Learning The Arabic Consonants Through Malay Accent

The current Arabic alphabetical order does not comply with the 'easy to difficult concept' for the Malay students as suggested in the education theory. For instance, alphabet 'tha' is considered difficult to the Malay students because the alphabet does not exist in the Malay alphabet consonant, whereas this alphabet is in the early part of the Arabic alphabetical order. Therefore, the aim of this study is to rearrange the Arabic consonants according to the Malay accent for learning purposes. The objectives of this study are to: (a) identify the fluency level of Arabic language consonants; and (b) rearrange the Arabic consonants according to the fluency of Malay accent. This study was carried out at the preschool centers deploying six-year-old children who have just started learning Arabic language. The instrument in this study was a set of pronunciation test based on al-Khalil Method. The pronunciation test was evaluated by two experts in 'tajwid' and 'tarannum' disciplines. The findings showed 12 consonants were found to be at the moderate level of fluency, and one at the weak level, and the rest at the high level. The findings also showed that the highest mean score is the alphabet, and the lowest score is alphabet. Therefore, this study suggests the identified Arabic alphabetical order to be used in teaching of the pronunciation of Arabic language in Malaysian schools.