The Availability of Morphological Awareness Skills among Arabic Language Department Students and Their Relationship to Serious Creativity

Abstract

This study deals with the issue of a relatively low degree of morphological awareness competence of students of the departments of Arabic language, although they are formally taught morphology in the program of university studies. The existing weakness is evident in the fact that students can apply little skills in the analysis of word structure and use the analyzed theory in organized, serious, and creative use of linguistic expression. This gap is seen to be a result of the traditional teaching methods which mostly involve lecture-based instruction rather than emphasizing on rote learning in lieu of deeper knowledge and analytical capabilities. Based on this, the current research aims at investigating the real state of morphological awareness among senior fourth-year students at the Arabic Language Department and also determine the correlation that exists between these abilities and their scale of serious creativity as well in a descriptive- analytical research design, which observes and interprets the occurrence of things as they are without any experimental manipulation.In order to attain these goals, the researcher has designed and confirmed two special tests: a morphological awareness test and the one evaluating serious creativity. A sample of 120 students was selected and these instruments were given to them. Findings revealed that the mean of the morphological awareness test was 61.45/100 (SD = 9.87) and this was generally moderate and with a slight gender disparity (males: 62.10; females: 60.90) and more distinctly by level of academic-achievements (80 GPA: 65.25). In the serious creativity test, the points were 66.72 (SD = 11.34) indicating moderate-to-good level of creativity, male students scored higher (67.85) than females (65.78), and high GPA students scored much higher (71.10). The Pearson correlation examination presented a statistically important positive connection amongst morphological awareness and serious creativity (r = 0.62, p < 0.001). The finding indicts that students who have more pronounced morphological skills will be able to generate serious and creative reactions. These findings give advantages to curricular changes involving the combination of profound linguistic discussions with innovative performance assignments, which motivate students to train their analytical and systematic abilities in real textual settings. The research suggests intervention into teaching the Arabic morphology in university curricula, the development of interactive contexts of education that provide morphology awareness as the basis of creative language use, and to investigate the topic further and to develop more accurate measuring instruments of such complex linguistic abilities.