The Proficiency in the Complete Jawi Spelling System (CJSS) Among Islamic Studies Teachers in Malacca

The effectiveness of teaching practice is closely related to the teachers’ proficiency on the contents of the subject taught. For Jawi subject, the contents refer to the teachers’ proficiency on the Complete Jawi Spelling System (CJSS). The teachers’ proficiency of CJSS will highly affect the students' proficiency in Jawi reading and writing and their knowledge in Islamic Studies subject indirectly. However, the study found that the students’ proficiency in Jawi is still low and moderate. The shortcomings were found to be stemmed from poor proficiency in the contents of CJSS among Islamic Studies teachers. Thus, this study aims to examine the level of knowledge and skill acquisition of CJSS of Islamic Studies teachers in Malacca. This quantitative research used descriptive statistics, which were percentage and mean value to report the finding. The questionnaire used a five-point Likert scale conducted on 217 respondents. The results showed that the proficiency level of CJSS of Islamic Studies teachers was high (mean = 4.074, sd = 0.350). In general, it can be concluded that the Islamic Studies teachers in Malacca have mastered the contents of Jawi lessons, which was CJSS.


INTRODUCTION
Jawi lesson was one of the components contained in Islamic Studies subject. Jawi lesson was included in the Integrated Curriculum for Primary Schools (ICPS) in 2003 with a special emphasis on Jawi reading and writing skills (Abd Hamid & Abdullah, 2009;The Ministry of Education, 2003;Mohamad @ Mohd Nor, 2013). The Ministry of Education has also decided that all Islamic Studies teachers across the country should use the Complete Jawi Spelling System (CJSS) that have been outlined by the Dewan Bahasa and Pustaka (DBP) during Jawi lessons in classroom. This indirectly indicated that the Islamic Studies teachers must have in-depth knowledge and skills to master the CJSS system well because without mastering the contents of the subjects taught, the delivery of knowledge could not occur optimally.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The ability of students to master Jawi reading and writing was very important because it was a factor that affected their understanding and proficiency in Islamic Studies (Che Man, 2007). To ensure that students were able to master Jawi reading and writing skills well, it depended on the mastery of the contents of the Complete Jawi Spelling System (CJSS) by the teachers who taught that subject. This was because teachers who had deep knowledge of the subjects they taught would be able to convey knowledge effectively to students. Teachers who did not have deep knowledge on the other hand, would have difficulties in delivering lessons comprehensively and were unable to produce students who could master the skills taught.
Based on previous studies that was conducted to identify the causes of these weaknesses, the teaching aspect was one of the factors that led to students' poor proficiency in Jawi. This factor was also closely related to the level of Jawi knowledge and skills among teachers who taught Jawi. The findings by Ali (2011Ali ( & 2012 and Abdullah (2014) for example showed that the proficiency of Jawi spelling among teachers-to-be were low and moderate. These findings were consistent with the study by Bahrun (2011) conducted on 265 trainee teachers at one of the Institute of Education which showed that 57.2% of them failed to master Jawi spelling using the correct Complete Jawi Spelling System (CJSS).
These shortcomings were serious and should not be taken lightly by the Islamic Studies teachers across the country as they were the group who was responsible for teaching Jawi to students. This phenomenon was worrying because of the lack of Jawi proficiency among Islamic Studies teachers that would likely giving inaccurate facts to students during teaching and learning sessions. This situation was not supposed to happen because the teachers should have deep knowledge of the contents of the lessons (Syarifuddin & Halim, 2017;Hashim & Phang, 2013). Hence, this study was conducted to examine the level of the content mastery of Islamic Studies teachers in Jawi and their skills in the Complete Jawi Spelling System (CJSS).

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
This study aims to achieve the following objectives: 1. To identify the profile of the Islamic Studies teachers who have taught Jawi lessons. 2. To evaluate the proficiency level of content knowledge and the Complete Jawi Spelling System (CJSS) skills among Islamic Studies teachers in Malacca.

METHODOLOGY
This study was a quantitative research using survey to get feedback on the phenomenon being studied. Sampling technique used in this study was simple random sampling which involved 217 Islamic Studies teachers from Melaka Tengah district based on Sample Size Determination Table (Krejcie & Morgan, 1970). The questionnaire and test were instruments used for this study to evaluate the proficiency level of Islamic Studies teachers on the Complete Jawi Spelling System (CJSS). In short, the survey questionnaire consisted of three parts which were: This questionnaire used a five-point Likert scale. The scores included Strongly Disagree (SD) with point 1, Disagree (D) with point 2, Less Agree (LA) with point 3, Agree (A) with point 4 and Strongly Agree (SA) with point 5. The reliability of this study was measured using the internal consistency through Cronbach Alpha and the reliability of the construct of knowledge on CJSS obtained the value of 0.913. This value was considered high because according to George & Mallery (2006), the coefficient alpha value of 0.8 was considered good while the coefficient alpha value above 0.9 was considered excellent.

ANALYSIS AND FINDING Teacher's Demographic Data
The analysis of this study used The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (IBBM SPSS) program version 21.0. Based on the sample distribution as shown in Table 2, 159 respondents (73.3%) were women while only 58 (26.7%), were men. The results in Table 3 show the highest academic qualification of the respondents of this study. A total of 180 respondents (82.9%) were Islamic Studies teachers under graduate category who have a Bachelor's and Master's degree. For non-graduate category, 37 of the respondents either have a Diploma, STPM or SPM (11.1%). Referring to Table 4, out of 217 respondents, 86 of them (39.6%) have a Diploma of Education as their professional qualification. Bachelor of Education recorded the second highest distribution of professional qualification, which were 73 respondents (33.6%) and the Certificate of Education recorded the lowest distribution which were 58 respondents (26.7%). For the sample distribution based on Jawi teaching experience, category 1-5 years reported the highest value, which were 68 respondents (31.3%). For 6-10 years category, it recorded the second highest value, which were 59 respondents (27.2%) and for the category of 11-15 years were 54 respondents (24.9%). While the remaining 36 respondents (16.6%) were for the category of more than 15 years of teaching experience. The sample distribution based on Jawi teaching experience is shown in Table 5. Based on the discussion on the demographics of the respondents, the majority of the respondents were women, which were 73.3%. In terms of the highest academic qualification, the majority of the respondents (82.9%) were graduate teachers while the highest professional qualification were Diploma holders in teaching which were 39.6%. In terms of teaching experience, 31.3% of the respondents have been teaching Jawi for 1 to 5 years.

The Knowledge of Complete Jawi Spelling System (CJSS)
The detail distribution of the finding for Islamic Studies teachers' understanding on CJSS was shown in Table 6. The overall mean for Jawi teaching practice was high (mean = 4.074, sd = 0.350). Although the overall finding of the analysis was at high level, there were four items which were C2, C19, C20 and C21 that obtained moderate mean value although the other 20 items obtained high mean value. Item C9 which was ' ‫و،‬ ‫ل،‬ ‫ر،‬ ‫د،‬ ‫غ‬ were letters that have to do with Derlung Rule and obtained the highest mean value (mean = 4.207, sd = 0.576). For this item, 61 respondents (28.1%) answered 'strongly agree' and 142 respondents (65.4%) answered 'agree' that the letters stated were related to Derlung Rule. However, 12 respondents (5.5%) answered 'less agree' and the remaining 2 (0.9%) 'disagree' with the statement. This finding indicated that most of the Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district have strong knowledge of various Jawi script contained in Derlung Rule although there were a small number who have not mastered this topic well.
Item C17 which was 'I spell the words 'susuk' and 'sosok' as ‫'سوسوق‬ recorded the highest mean value (mean=4.152, sd=0.700). For this item, a total of 60 respondents (27.6%) answered 'strongly agree' and 139 respondents (64.1%) answered 'agree' while the remaining 16 answered 'less agree' , 'disagree' and 'strongly disagree' with this statement. Based on this finding, we could conclude that the Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district have a good grasp of the concept of Homograph, which was the words with the same spelling but have different meaning.
The Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district also have good understanding of numerical method in Jawi, which was the function of symbol [٢] to symbolise double words. This could be seen through the analysis of item C24 'I correct the spelling of the word ‫اما‬ ‫ر‬ -‫اما‬ ‫ر‬ written by students to ‫اما‬ ‫ر‬ ٢ ' which obtained high mean value (mean = 4.129, sd = 0.753). Based on the analysis, 65 respondents (30.0%) answered 'strongly agree' and 126 respondents (58.1%) answered 'agree' that they used symbol [٢] when writing the word 'rama-rama' in Jawi. However, there were 16 respondents (7.4%) who answered 'disagree' which indicated that there were still some respondents who did not understand very well on how to write double words in Jawi, which should be written using symbol [٢].
However, item C2 'the word ‫ليوت‬ cannot be categorised in _e / wa_ method' obtained the lowest mean value (mean = 2.562, sd = 1.272) and was classified as moderate. Only 7 respondents (3.2%) answered 'strongly agree' and 64 respondents (29.5%) answered 'agree' that this word could not be categorised in _e / wa_ method. While 36 respondents (16.6%) answered 'less agree', 47 respondents (21.7%) answered 'disagree' and the remaining 63 (29.0%) answered 'strongly disagree'. The answers from the respondents also indicated that some of them might translate the word ‫'ليوت'‬ mentioned in this item as 'lewat' not 'liut'. In conclusion, this analysis finding showed that the level of understanding of Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district on _e / wa_ method was extremely low and a small number of respondents have understood the concept of adding 'alif' letter in that method.

The Level of Understanding of Islamic Studies Teachers on CJSS System
The overall mean score for the understanding of Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district on CJSS was high (mean = 2.696, sd = 0.461). According to the mean score interpretation, 151 respondents (69.6%) were in the category of 'high understanding' and the remaining 66 (30.4%), were in 'moderate understanding' category while no respondents were in 'low understanding' category. The level of understanding of Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district on CJSS was shown in Table 7. The proficiency level of Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district in changing the words into Jawi according to CJSS was shown in Table 8. Based on the analysis, 75 respondents (34.6%) scored between 65% -79%, a 'good' grade score which was also the top grade score for the skill acquisition of changing the words into Jawi. 62 respondents (28.6%) scored between 50% -64%, which was 'satisfactory' and only 52 respondents (24.0%) were 'excellent' which scored between 80% -100%. The total score for the three grades of 'satisfactory', 'good' and 'excellent' was 189 respondents (87.1%) and they were categorised as 'proficient' in changing the words into Jawi using CJSS. However, the analysis of this study also scored relatively high for 'poor' grade which was 21 respondents (9.7%) who obtained marks between 40% -49%, whereas the remaining 7 respondents (3.2%) were 'very weak', who scored between 0% -39%. Overall, the analysis showed that the total score for the 'poor' grade was categorised as 'mastering minimum level' and 'very poor' grade was categorised as 'not proficient' for changing the words into Jawi according to CJSS. The finding concluded that there were small number of respondents who taught Jawi lessons but have not mastered Jawi skills well using CJSS.

DISCUSSION
Every teacher should have profound knowledge more than their students. Their knowledge and proficiency especially the subjects they taught must be intense to convince themselves and gain the trust from the students (Jaafar, Tamuri & Ya, 2012) in order to be respected by them (Tamuri, Ismail & Jasmi, 2012). Thus, for this study, profound knowledge that should be acquired by the teachers in teaching Jawi was concerned with the Complete Jawi Spelling System (CJSS) as instructed by the Ministry of Education through Circular Letter No. 1/1992. To achieve good and effective Jawi teaching practices, Islamic Studies teachers must have high level of knowledge about CJSS and be able to master the skills of CJSS comprehensively.
Derlung Rule was one of the methods contained in CJSS that should be acquired by the Islamic Studies teachers. Based on the analysis, this study showed that most of the Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district have great knowledge of the letters that were categorized in Derlung Rule. This finding was in line with the statement of Tamuri, Ismail and Jasmi (2012) who stated that a teacher should have wide knowledge, including in-depth knowledge of the subjects they taught. The Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district seemed to clearly understand the concept of Derlung Rule which was the method related to two open syllables at the end of the words (Abdul Rahman, 2014;Hamzah, Lubis & Che Noh, 2016) when they obtained high mean score on items related to this construct. This finding demonstrated that the Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district have mastered the contents of the subjects taught very well and they have great skills in spelling Jawi correctly for Derlung Rule, hence criticized the finding of Ali (2012) which stated that the teachers' proficiency level in Jawi reading and writing was moderate.
However, the level of understanding of Islamic Studies teachers was not only measured in terms of their knowledge in Jawi which was their field, but they must also be knowledgeable on how to teach or convey knowledge. The process of delivering knowledge to students was something very important , as the teachers who were knowledgeable but failed to deliver knowledge were categorized as a 'failed' teacher. The Islamic Studies teachers must ensure that their personality was not only in terms of the content mastery of Jawi lessons, but also from the aspect of pedagogical content as the content mastery of teacher's pedagogy in Jawi would determine the quality of their teaching practices and thus, affect the students. However, knowledge in Jawi and how to deliver that knowledge were not enough if the teachers themselves did not have Jawi reading and writing skills according to CJSS.
Thus, based on this study, the proficiency of CJSS in terms of skills could be seen through the knowledge and skills acquired by the Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district where Homograph seemed to be a method that often confused the users (Abdul Aziz & Musa, 2010). Based on the finding, it could be understood that the Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district have understood better on the concept of Homograph in Jawi when they agreed that the words 'susuk' and 'sosok' should be spelled similarly in Jawi. This corresponded with the definition of homograph that refers to words which have different meaning but are spelled with the same spelling (Ahmad 2015;Abdul Rahman, 2014). This finding demonstrated that the Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district have not only had deep knowledge on Homograph concept but also acquired skills in spelling and writing Homograph words according to proper CJSS. The combination of these two elements of content knowledge and writing skills will lead to the acquisition of pedagogical content, which was an effective Jawi teaching.
However, to master Jawi reading and writing skills according to CJSS was not easy and the challenges were not only faced by the non-Islamic Studies teachers but also most of the Islamic Studies teachers. This statement was proven by the finding of numerical method construct, which obtained mean value lower than other constructs and it was only at a moderate level. This finding suggested that the understanding of Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka tengah district on the numerical method in Jawi was low and they did not know that the numbers […٠،١،٢،٣] were actually Hindu numerals and not the Arabic numerals (Ahmad, 2015). This scenario should not happen to Islamic Studies teachers who should master each Jawi content well, especially if the numerical method was the most basic knowledge that should have been acquired by them. This finding seemed to be related with the finding by Ali & Abdullah (2015) which stated that the Islamic Studies teachers did not have a solid foundation on CJSS due to lack of exposure as Jawi was not taught specifically when they were in the faculty of Islamic Studies.
Lack of strong fundamental knowledge on CJSS was proven by the finding, which showed that 3.2% of Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district did not master the skills yet based on the test of changing the words into Jawi that followed the exact CJSS. Although this percentage was relatively small, the finding illustrated that there was still a small number of Islamic Studies teachers in Melaka Tengah district who have taught Jawi but still have not mastered CJSS properly. This finding was consistent with studies by Ali (2011Ali ( & 2012, Abdullah (2014) and Bahrun (2011) who found that the proficiency level of Jawi spelling of teachers-to-be was moderate. The weaknesses in acquiring and mastering Jawi spelling and writing skills through CJSS would undoubtedly lead to mistakes in the lessons delivered to the students. This statement was reinforced by Ahmad (2015) who stated that to date, the Islamic Studies teachers and certain books have taught students that there were only three vowels in Jawi, while in fact there were four Jawi vowels, which were alif, wau, ya' and 'ye that should be taught since 2005 when the General Guidelines of Malay Jawi Spelling (PUEJBM) was launched by the Dewan Bahasa and Pustaka. Therefore, the Islamic Studies teachers should always cultivate the knowledge within themselves (Jaafar, Tamuri & Ya, 2012) to address these shortcomings.

CONCLUSION
The Islamic Studies teachers who are effective in the teaching of Jawi are the teachers who are always trying to prepare themselves with knowledge and skills using CJSS from time to time and think globally to find information continuously as a process of acquiring knowledge to ensure the transmission of accurate knowledge and facts to their students. Through the integration of in-depth knowledge on the content of the lessons and skill acquisition using CJSS in Jawi writing, teachers will be able to produce an effective teaching that will facilitate students to master Jawi reading and writing more quickly and effectively. Excellent Jawi proficiency among students will help them understand and acquire the knowledge of Islamic Studies better as Islamic Studies subject is supposed to be taught entirely in Jawi. The teachers who teach Jawi will also indirectly contribute to the formation of a society who respects the Jawi script as a precious art heritage.