STUDENTS’ INTEREST TOWARDS LEARNING ARABIC THROUGH ONLINE: A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY

Arabic at Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UniKL) has been offered since its inception in August 2002 through the Student Development and Campus Lifestyle Division (SDCL). To date, there are five UniKL campuses offering Arabic subjects as a third language, which is an elective language subject that can be taken by students at the Diploma and Bachelor levels. This study tries to focus the BA learning process at UniKL campus of the Royal College of Medicine Perak (UniKL RCMP) on students' interest through online learning when the study session took place in the Covid-19 dynamic atmosphere since March 2020. A total of 98 respondents were selected among students of Arabic 1 semester July 2021 from various backgrounds such as gender, semester and program to answer some selected questions regarding their interest in Arabic subjects throughout the learning process takes place online. This study adopts a quantitative descriptive research methodology, which is one of the scientific methods that answers the question of what, who, when and where. All the details of the respondents were collected and entered in the table systematically according to the order of background. Based on the findings of the study, students 'interest in learning Arabic online is declining due to the limitations of some things that are the dominant factors that drive students' interest in learning a third language subject such as Arabic. However, the declining interest among students today due to the different learning environment should be seen as a serious matter among teachers, especially lecturers at the university to help and rebuild their interest so that the Arabic learning process becomes more interesting.