The Importance of Immediate Learning Context: An Investigation on the Arabic as a Foreign Language Classroom

The importance of the immediate learning context (ILC) on language learning motivation (LLM) has been asserted by different theorists and researchers and incorporated in a number of LLM models. The teaching materials, amount of variety in classroom work, the nature of the classroom organization, and the nature of the teacher-student relationship can all influence motivation. The aim of this study is to investigate the different motivational variables in the immediate learning context among the non-Muslim Malaysian learners of Arabic (NMMLAs). The focus variables of the immediate learning context in this study are teacher's personality and teacher's method of teaching. The study adopts a mix method approach where a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were employed to obtain the data. The questionnaires were distributed to 207 respondents who are non-Muslim Malaysians learning Arabic as a compulsory subject at the Faculty of Law in UKM. In order to gain more insights, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 respondents. The findings reveal that teacher's personality seems to play the most important role in shaping the culture of learning Arabic as a foreign language. The teacher's style and method of teaching is another important component in language instruction that motivated the Arabic language learners in their classroom. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.