The Effectiveness of Applying the 'Intima' Approach (Inghimasy, Tawashuly, and Mawad Ashilah) in Enhancing Arabic Accent Mastery in Speaking Skills

Abstract

Fluent Arabic accent mastery remains a significant challenge in speaking instruction, often hindered by theoretical rigidity and passive learning environments. This study aims to empirically test the effectiveness of the "Intima" approach (integrating immersive environments, communicative interaction, and authentic native-speaker materials) in accelerating students' speaking proficiency and accent accuracy. Employing a quantitative quasi-experimental design with a nonequivalent control group model, the research involved 68 fifth-grade students at Dar el-Qolam 3 Islamic Boarding School, split equally into an experimental group (N = 34) and a control group (N = 34). Data were collected using pre-test and post-test oral performance evaluations. Due to a non-normal data distribution, as verified by the Shapiro-Wilk test, hypothesis testing was conducted using the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test, alongside N-Gain analysis. The statistical analysis yielded an asymptotic p-value of < 0.001, indicating a significant divergence in performance. The experimental group's post-test mean rose from 57.97 to 79.63, whereas the control group's rose only from 60.07 to 63.75. An N-Gain score of 63.76% categorizes the "Intima" approach as "moderately effective." These findings demonstrate that structured immersion and authentic communicative engagement are effective pedagogical alternatives to traditional methods for fostering foreign-language accent mastery.