Vocabulary has been recognized as crucial for students who learn Arabic as a foreign language. Students need more Arabic vocabulary to acquire Arabic language skills. This present study was concerned with developing and assessing the content validity of an Arabic vocabulary achievement instrument for digital storytelling-based application. The instrument developed consisted of 40 items. 12 experts in the Arabic field determined the content validity scale of the instrument. This instrument was then administered to 40 Malaysian secondary school students. The result showed high content validity and reliability with all items displaying a positive value. The analysis used Cronbach's alpha to test the internal consistency reliability, and the alpha value showed .810 indicated very reliability. Therefore, present findings suggest that the instrument's content validity and composite reliability are appropriate for evaluating students' enhancement toward learning Arabic vocabulary.
TopIntroduction
Acquiring vocabulary is the main key to mastering any language. With an extensive vocabulary, students can achieve language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing (Syakirah et al., 2022). They cannot understand, think and cannot express their ideas during communication in written and spoken forms of language (Mohamad Lukman et al., 2023). Therefore, vocabulary is important as students can match and combine a few additional words they understand to construct a whole sentence that reflects the intended meaning (Harun et al., 2023).
In the Malaysian context, students’ achievement in the aspect of Arabic vocabulary learning is still unsatisfactory. Research done by Norhayuza et al. (2021) stated that most students face multiple problems in learning Arabic due to their vocabulary level. Some of the reasons that cause students to be unsuccessful in mastering Arabic vocabulary are mostly because students think that learning Arabic is difficult and become easily bored (Husein et al., 2020). Besides, learning of Arabic language still uses conventional learning techniques and is not able to build students’ interest in learning Arabic. Therefore, to improve the quality of Arabic vocabulary learning, a new method of using technology in teaching and learning is needed to arouse students’ enthusiasm.
Digital storytelling-based application is an alternative instructional tool that can be used for Arabic vocabulary learning to make learning more interesting. It combines stories and modern technology to be a tool for Arabic language learning (Anggara, 2023). It can bring benefits to students by creating learning motivation, improving attention and increasing their achievement in Arabic academics (Lim & Md Noor, 2019). Digital storytelling can help the student build connections with prior knowledge and new information about Arabic, indirectly encouraging them to learn new words of Arabic (Sanz, 2015; Sembiring & Simajuntak, 2023). According to Maya et al. (2022), digital storytelling application is a medium of instruction for supporting students’ vocabulary development with many stories embedded inside them. It is suitable for children as it is a way of telling stories in Arabic using digital technologies approach (Tatlı et al., 2022). Digital storytelling through mobile applications is an influential activity in learning Arabic vocabulary that can help them expand their vocabulary.
Research on the effectiveness of digital storytelling-based applications in improving Arabic vocabulary can be beneficial at great length. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the validation and reliability of Arabic vocabulary achievement instruments, which will be distributed after students use digital storytelling-based applications to learn Arabic vocabulary.