The Effect of Watching the Cartoon Film "The Lost Cat" on Listening Skill of Trilateral Verbs

Pengaruh Menonton Film Kartun “The Lost Cat” terhadap Kemampuan Mendengarkan Kata Kerja Trilateral

Abstract

Background: Listening skills (maharah istima') are the foundation of Arabic language acquisition; however, female students’ ability to understand transitive and intransitive triliteral verbs (fi'il tsulasi) in spoken discourse remains low due to the limited availability of contextual audiovisual materials.

Purpose: This study aims to describe the level of maharah istima’ before and after watching the animated film “Al-Qith Adh-Dha’i’,” measure the impact of the screening, and reveal its contribution to morphological awareness.

Method: The study employed a one-group pretest–posttest pre-experimental design using a mixed-methods approach; data were collected from 10 female 11th-grade students at Madrasah Aliyah Al-Bayan Hidayatullah in Makassar through tests, Likert-scale questionnaires, observations, and interviews, and were then analyzed using descriptive statistics, N-Gain, and qualitative descriptive analysis with triangulation.

Results and Discussion: The results showed a limited increase from 51% (adequate) to 63% (good) with an N-Gain of 0.22 (low category), a positive affective response of 71.4% (good), and an initial morphological awareness of 52% (adequate); these findings fill a research gap by demonstrating that animated films serve as a strong motivational-contextual mediator in the affective domain, yet are not sufficient on their own to produce profound cognitive gains without organized morphological practice.

Conclusions and Implications: The screening of animated films contributes fundamentally, though not absolutely effectively, to listening comprehension and morphological awareness; therefore, animated films need to be integrated with organized morphological exercises and clear audio materials, and further research with control groups and larger samples is warranted.