Prathom Students’ Perceptions of Arabic as a Foreign Language Learning in a Multicultural School

Abstract

Arabic occupies a distinctive position among Muslim learners in Southern Thailand because it carries strong religious significance while remaining a foreign language outside everyday communication. This study explored Grade 5 Prathom students’ perceptions of learning Arabic as a foreign language and examined how social and instructional mediation shaped their learning experiences through Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory. A qualitative case study was conducted at Chum Chon Ban Sako School, Narathiwat, Thailand, involving 20 students and one Arabic teacher. Data were collected over two months through five classroom observations, in-depth interviews, document analysis, and a supplementary closed-ended questionnaire. Data were analyzed using an interactive process of data condensation, data display, and conclusion drawing and verification, supported by source and method triangulation. The findings revealed that students strongly valued Arabic because of its connection with the Qur’an, prayer, worship, and Islamic identity, but this positive perception coexisted with difficulties in pronunciation, vocabulary meaning, writing, sentence construction, and grammar. Repetitive memorization was associated with boredom and reduced engagement, whereas songs, picture cards, games, rewards, peer interaction, and hiwar were accompanied by more active classroom participation. These findings demonstrate that students’ perceptions emerged through the interaction of religious meaning, multilingual experience, linguistic difficulty, and classroom mediation. Arabic instruction for young learners should therefore integrate its religious relevance with scaffolded, contextualized, interactive, and developmentally appropriate communicative activities.