The Gaps of Students' Writing Skills in Arabic Thesis Writing

: The relevance of the maharat al-Kitabah to an Arabic thesis writing is very significant. However, Arabic thesis writing which was also carried out by Arabic Education Study Program students created new problems, especially in aspects related to Arabic writing skills. This article aimed to reveal the gap that occurs between the ideal conditions and current conditions of students' Arabic writing skills. By using a convergent parallel mixed method design from Creswell, qualitative data was collected through FGD with 19 Arabic students at State Islamic University of Imam Bonjol who completed their studies with an Arabic thesis with 10 semesters study period or more and compared them with the quantitative data from questionnaires were distributed to 50 respondents. The gap between the ideal and the current condition of the mufrodat aspect was 98 (51%). The gap in the tarjamah aspect between ideal and current conditions was 113 (60.7%). The gap in aspects of Nahwu rules between ideal and present conditions was 78 (41.5%). The gap in aspects of Sharf between the ideal and the current condition is 102 (54.3%). Of all the aspects studied, the biggest gap were in the tarjamah aspect. The results of the learning process analysis showed that the process was still lacking in practical aspects. For this reason, it was recommended continuing research or focusing on improving translation skills, either by conducting Classroom Action Research or Experiments with new methods that could support students' Arabic translation skills.


Introduction
Writing skill is necessary for the preservation, dissemination and development of information and knowledge. In the context of Arabic learning in formal educational institutions, writing skill is an aspect that is trained intensively. 1 Writing skill training 1 Munawarah Munawarah and Zulkiflih Zulkiflih, "Pembelajaran Keterampilan Menulis (Maharah al-Kitabah) dalam Bahasa Arab," Loghat Arabi: Jurnal Bahasa Arab dan Pendidikan Bahasa Arab 1, no. 2 (2021): 22-34. takes a long time with the average student completing their studies in 10 th semesters as the fastest. 16 In line with this explanation, other studies explained that the diverse educational backgrounds of students affect their abilities and readiness. This is in line with the situation of Arabic department students in State Islamic University of Imam Bonjol Padang that hava the obligation to write their whole thesis in Arabic. Based on the results of a preliminary study through brief interviews with several students during the guidance process, the obligation to write Arabic thesis was a burden for students. As stated by Asmawan,17 there were internal factor and external factor that might affect the students. Internal factors are about the motivation and the ability of the students to complete the thesis. Meanwhile, external factors are the management system of completing the thesis by their faculty and advisors and the environment.
Several researchers focused on describing errors in Indonesian-Arabic translation or vice versa. 181920 There are several other studies which are limited to writing errors in the thesis as the object of study, 21222324 the results of each mostly described the errors in the Arabic thesis. Therefore, this article intended to reveal the reasons and factors behind the translation errors that occur by analyzing three aspects, namely analysis of ideal conditions, process analysis, and analysis of current conditions. In addition, previous research also used error analysis, survey and qualitative descriptive research methods, while this article used a different method, namely the convergent parallel mixed method.
This article aimed to analyze the gap between ideal conditions and current conditions based on facts that occur in the field related to maharat al-Kitabah.
From the description of the relevant research results and after conducting a related literature review, it was assumed that students' ability to write or maharat al-Kitabah still has a gap between ideal conditions and actual conditions from errors in writing or translating Arabic thesis, so this gap needs to be mapped and studied further. It was assumed that by knowing the gaps in students' maharat al-Kitabah through this research, students' writing skills can be improved by designing policies and activities that support the improvement of their writing skills.
This article adapted a need analysis approach in accordance with the theory developed by Tony Dudley 25 which was also adopted by Mahbub which stated that need analysis can be broken down three types: TSA (Target Situation Categories), LSA (Learning Situation Analysis) and PSA (Present Situation Analysis). 26 There are two aspects in accordance with the concept of gap analysis which will compare between Target Situation Analysis to formulate future conditions for students in writing skills and Present-Situation Analysis which describes the level of proficiency in Arabic writing and weaknesses in ability to write Arabic (Maharat al-Kitabah) for State Islamic University of Imam Bonjol Padang students regarding writing Arabic thesis.

Methods
Convergent parallel mixed design was used with mixed methods research in this article. In accordance with Cresswell's opinion that in a parallel design (also called a concurrent or simultaneous design), the quantitative and qualitative strands of the study occured in parallel, whether concurrrently (beginning and ending at almost the same time) or at some interval (i.e., data collection starts or ends later than the other). 27 Qualitative and quantitative steps were arranged and implemented to address related aspects of the same basic research questions. The research was begun by analyzing documents and literature related to Arabic writing skills or maharat al-Kitabah. In accordance with the chosen research design, after studying the documents, the qualitative data was collected through FGD with selected informants, namely 19 students who completed their thesis for more than 8 semesters. Other data obtained in parallel from the questionnaire to be compared or connected. Questionnaires were distributed to 50 students who had written their thesis in Arabic. The research location chosen was at State Islamic University of Imam Bonjol Padang based on the urgency considerations for researchers as lecturers at that location.
The focus of the study in this article focused on Arabic writing skills or maharat al-Kitabah in Arabic thesis writing because kitabah is the culmination of the four language skills. Besides that, writing an Arabic thesis is also a requirement for graduation or getting a bachelor's degree for Arabic education students.
In the process of collecting data through FGD, source triangulation was used and data collected from one informant was corroborated by other informants. 28 The data obtained from the FGD would be presented descriptively and the questionnaire data would also be presented descriptively. Descriptive means to describe what is the real situation where it takes places. 293031 Meanwhile, there are 2 data analysis techniques used in this article, the first is a qualitative analysis from Miles and Huberman as shown in the following figure: are data collections, data reduction, data presentation, drawing conclusions and verification. 3233343536 The steps do not have to be carried out entirely by the researcher in sequence, when the data is considered qualified, good or saturated, then the data may be displayed immediately or temporary conclusions can be drawn immediately. Sorting data or data reduction is done if the data is considered to be mixed or there are still some that are not appropriate so that it needs to be reduced.
The data were discussed by using qualitative data analysis consisting of the results of FGD with 19 Arabic Education students related to the conditions of writing ability or maharat al-Kitabah of Arabic Education students related to writing Arabic thesis. Then the data from the questionnaire instrument were distributed to 50 respondents. Data from the respondents were analyzed using a percentage descriptive analysis technique. With the following data interpretation intervals: In terms of gap analysis, two previously obtained data was compared, they were data from the analysis of ideal conditions or Target Situation Analysis with data from the analysis of current conditions or Present Situation Analysis of students' writing ability or maharat al-Kitabah. In addition, the qualitative data was not merely analyzed, because in accordance with the convergent mixed method, after obtaining qualitative data related to ideal conditions and current conditions related to students' writing abilities or maharat al-Kitabah, the ideal conditions and current conditions about maharat al-Kitabah were also compared and interrelated regarding the writing of the thesis in Arabic with quantitative data from the questionnaire results.

Target Situation Analysis (TSA)
Data which related to TSA or the data about the ideal condition of students' ability to write Arabic (Maharat al-Kitabah) that were obtained from the FGD showed that all informants agreed with the ideal conditions of the four aspects which became indicators of writing skills related to language thesis such as mastery of mufrodat (vocabulary), translation ability, mastery of qowaid, nahwu and sharf. The data from the FGD results were compared with data on the results of the questionnaire instrument that the researchers distributed to a wider range of respondents, namely 50 respondents. It is presented in the table 2:  Furthermore, 94% of students agree with the ideal conditions in mastering Arabic nahwu rules, this can also be interpreted that students who write Arabic thesis strongly agree with the ideal conditions in mastering nahwu rules. Meanwhile, 94% of students agree with the ideal conditions in mastering the Arabic sharf rules. Mastery and use of the nahwu and sharf rules themselves are inseparable from the ability to write, as any writing can be read and understood if the correct rules are used. This also corroborates the results of previous studies discussing grammatical errors in Arabic thesis. 40 From the detailed explanation above, it was obtained that the overall score of the four aspects studied obtained a value of 94.25% which can be interpreted as ideal, that is, all students agree with the ideal conditions that students should have in maharat al-Kitabah, especially when writing thesis in Arabic.

Present-Situation Analysis (PSA)
The data related to PSA that was obtained from the FGD showed that among the four aspects that became indicators of writing skills related to Arabic thesis, namely 37 Zughrofiyatun Najah and Arizka Agustina, "Analisis Kesalahan Semantik pada Skripsi Mahasiswa Jurusan Pendidikan Bahasa Arab UIN Raden Intan Lampung," Al-Fathin 3, no. 1 (2020): 1-12. 38  related to translation skills, mastery of qowaid nahwu and sharf, mastery of mufrodat, especially in writing Arabic thesis. Several informants stated that they did not master vocabulary related to research terms, but other participants stated that mastery of mufrodat was obtained from an Arabic dictionary or an Arabic translation machine indirectly when translating their thesis. As the existence of a translation machine is indeed a breath of fresh air for academics in the field of foreign languages. 4142 However, mastery of mufrodat is also often neglected when convenience comes from the existence of technology, it should be helped by the existence of technology. 4344 From the data of the FGD results compared with the data on questionnaire which was distributed to 50 respondents, the mastery of mufrodat showed score of 47%. This can be interpreted that the condition of students' mufrodat mastery is in the less category.
Meanwhile, the aspect of students' ability to translate Arabic is low, which is only 34%.
It can also be interpreted that with a score of 34%, students who write Arabic thesis feel that their ability to translate from Indonesian into Arabic is still relatively low. The low ability of this translation has implications for the quality of Arabic writing which is prone to errors and it might cause the thesis completion process take a long time. 45 Several informants stated that they used Google Translate in the process of translating their thesis, although the portion of using Google Translate also varied and needed a more in-depth search to find out whether Google Translate supports Arabic translation which is very different in terms of grammar and writing from English. 46 The result showed that there are many weaknesses in the translation machine when used to translate Arabic text. The machine is not able to distinguish gender 47 between mudzakar (male) or muannats (female) and other linguistic errors that translation machines cannot overcome. 484950 In the mastery of nahwu and sharf rules, the result is that 19 informants agreed that theoretically mastery of Nahwu rules was good. Meanwhile, their mastery of sharf was still lacking. Then the practical aspect is still low, especially in terms of writing practice by concerning on nahwu and sharf. This was also confirmed by questionnaire data which showed that mastery of nahwu rules in the theoretical aspect showed a score of 67% which is in a good interpretation interval, whereas when applying nahwu rules when writing Arabic gets a different response, namely by obtaining a score 43%. In contrast to sharf, both aspects of both theory and practice are equally low with a theoretical score of 47% and 37% in practice. This can be interpreted that students who wrote their thesis in Arabic in applying Nahwu and Sharf rules in Arabic thesis had an average score of nahwu 55% and sharf 42%.
The score related to PSA can be seen in the following questionnaire data tabulation table:   Table 3 is the data which related to current conditions or PSA obtained through a   questionnaire and converted with the previous interval table. From table 3 above, it can be interpreted that students assumed that their abilities were still lacking, especially in matters that are practical in Maharat al-Kitabah, as a result, students experienced many problems in writing their thesis and grammatical and structure errors were found frequently. 51 One of the solutions for students based on FGD was to use Google Translate. However, due to their low ability in the mufrodat and qowaid aspects, there are many mistakes in the use of terms or the choice of Arabic vocabulary 52 and nahwu and sharf as well. 53

Gap Analysis
From the analysis of documents and literature, a concept was obtained from Iskandarwassid 54 and Rathomi 55 who stated that indicators of writing skills, especially those related to narrative or advanced writing skills that are appropriate for writing Arabic thesis are mastery of mufrodat, translation ability, mastery of qowaid nahwu and sharf. The data related to this gap was obtained from the FGD and the descriptive analysis of the questionnaire were also presented by dividing it into four aspects which became indicators of writing skills related to Arabic thesis, namely related to mastery of mufrodat, translation ability, mastery of qowaid nahwu and sharf, can be seen in the table 4:  Table 4 is data related to gap analysis obtained by comparing ideal conditions and current conditions, with details of the mufrodat aspect having an ideal condition score of 96 and a current condition score of 46, the gap between ideal conditions and current conditions is 50% of the ideal score. Gap data on the tarjamah aspect which has an ideal condition score of 93 and a current condition score of 34, the gap between the ideal condition and the current condition is 59% of the ideal score. Gap data on aspects of nahwu rules which have an ideal condition score of 94 and a current condition score of 55, the gap between ideal conditions and current conditions is 39% of the ideal score.
The next data is gap data on the aspect of sharf rule which has an ideal condition score of 94 and a current condition score of 44, the gap between ideal conditions and current conditions is 50% of the ideal score.
With different research objectives and methods from previous studies, namely convergent parallel mixed methods, in-depth data was obtained through FGD and expanded them through questionnaires. Compared with the results of thematic research, this article corroborated previous research which stated that there were still many writing errors both from the mufrodat, 5657 translation, 5859 and grammatical aspects. 60 This article confirmed that in Arabic thesis writing there were also similar errors. The gap between the ideal condition and the current condition of the four aspects which are indicators of Arabic writing ability, namely the mufrodat and grammatical aspects of both nahwu and sharf as well as the translation aspect. It was also found that out of all the four aspects, the aspect that was the most gaping or the most the big gap is in the aspect of translation.
The results of the analysis of existing learning situations or processes also show that the process is still low. With limited time and funds, this article should be able to follow up on the findings and at the same time seek to improve translation skills, both the process and the results.
It was recommended for the future researchers to research and focus on improving the process of learning and teaching, either by conducting Class Action Research, experiment of new methods or training programs and other programs that can support students' ability to translate Arabic, so that they do not merely rely on translation machines that might cause some errors both from the grammatical and structures aspects, especially in Arabic.

Conclusion
The ideal conditions related to writing Arabic thesis are goals for Arabic Education both students and lecturers, but the gap between current conditions and ideal conditions in the aspects needed in the maharat al-Kitabah was still large. Out of all four aspects studied, translation ability was the largest gap. The ability to translate does require skills in both mufrodat and grammatical aspects, both nahwu and sharf. If you look at it in general, that the ability to write in the four aspects studied is still very disparate, or there is a large enough gap between the expected conditions that should be with the real conditions or current conditions of students, so students choose the translation machine application as an instant solution due to the low abilities of translation. The results of the analysis of the current learning situations or processes also showed that the process was still low. Hence, it was recommended for the future researchers to have a further research and focus on improving the process of interactive learning. Thus, the Arabic translation would not merely rely on the translation machines which might lead to errors.