PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Arabic news anchors provide valuable training for students to comprehend content, grasp messages, and refine pronunciation and fluency. This study evaluates the performance of Indonesian and Malaysian students in presenting Arabic news using a comparative methodology. The research followed several stages: collecting video recordings and scripts of Arabic news presentations by Indonesian and Malaysian students, reviewing each video multiple times, analyzing fluency based on the multidimensional fluency scale, noting errors, and coding. The sample was selected using purposive sampling, consisting of participants in an Arabic news reading training organized collaboratively by Ahmad Dahlan University, Indonesia, and Universiti Teknologi Mara, Malaysia. This study aims to assess and compare their performance against established theoretical benchmarks through a detailed analysis of student-produced videos from both countries. Findings show that students from both Indonesia and Malaysia performed best in the aspect of smoothness. However, Indonesian students must improve their expression and volume, while Malaysian students should improve their pacing. The results indicate that a balance among expression, volume, phrasing, smoothness, and pace is essential for reading fluency and comprehension. The result found errors in Indonesian and Malaysian students in Arabic news anchors, which include Arabic syntax, pronouncing the hijaiyah, long-short vowels, and errors in reading unvowelized sentences caused by limited vocabulary. The findings concluded that Arabic news as authentic material combined with a multidimensional fluency scale as an assessment rubric can be used to evaluate students’ Arabic reading skills in detail.