The Impact of Communicative Language Teaching on Arabic Proficiency Outcomes in Nigerian Secondary Schools: An Empirical Investigation

Despite decades of advocacy for communicative language teaching as a superior approach to foreign language instruction, its systematic implementation and empirical evaluation in Nigerian Arabic language classrooms remains limited, leaving a critical gap between pedagogical theory and documented classroom practice. This study empirically investigates the impact of communicative language teaching on the Arabic proficiency outcomes of senior secondary school students in Nigeria, comparing the performance of students taught through CLT approaches with those taught through traditional grammar-translation methods. Using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design, the research assigns 240 students from eight secondary schools in Kwara and Ogun States to experimental and control conditions, ensuring equivalence through propensity score matching on pretest proficiency, socioeconomic status, and prior Arabic exposure. The experimental condition involves a 16-week CLT intervention designed around communicative tasks, oral interaction activities, and authentic Arabic materials. Pre- and post-tests covering speaking, listening, reading, and writing are administered using validated instruments. Multilevel analysis is employed to account for school-level clustering effects. Findings show statistically significant advantages for the CLT group on speaking and listening measures but comparable performance on reading and writing tasks, nuancing the universal efficacy claims made for CLT. The study concludes with a contextualised model of CLT adaptation for Nigerian Arabic classrooms. Keywords: Communicative language teaching, Arabic proficiency, secondary schools, quasi-experimental design, Nigeria.