Abstract
While Arabic is taught at a number of Japanese universities, we must grasp the actual conditions of Arabic instruction and learning as experienced by Japanese students. The purpose of this study is to clarify Japanese university students’ interest in Arabic culture when they seek to learn Arabic. We use data obtained from a questionnaire survey.
The data were collected from 291 Arabic major students and 371 non-Arabic major students. The questionnaire included 12 items to assess students’ interests in Arabic cultural elements, such as Islam and Women’s Issues, and 32 items concerning 11 Arabic learning outcomes, such as subjective effort and learning anxiety.
The results indicate that both Arabic majors and non-Arabic major students expressed a high degree of interest in Arabic cultural elements, and that the ratings were almost evenly spread among each of the survey items, except for Islam. In both groups, all 12 items of interest formed a single factor. Additionally, the Arabic major students indicated slightly greater interest in Arabic culture than the non-Arabic major students. The stated interests for each group were closely related to four of the Arabic learning outcomes in particular: learning motivation, self-efficacy, goal of acquisition, and self-actualization through learning. In addition, the results for both groups displayed little relationship between the stated interests and another four of the outcomes: subjective achievement, satisfaction with achievement, learning anxiety, and subjective difficulty of acquisition.
These results suggest the significance of students’ interest in Arabic culture while learning Arabic. The implications of the common characteristics of interest among the two groups, and the significance of cultural interests for Arabic language education are also discussed.
