<![CDATA[Arabic speaking instruction (mahārah kalām) at the Madrasah Tsanawiyah (MTs) level is ideally directed toward the development of students’ communicative competence. In practice, however, many students still experience psychological barriers in the form of speaking anxiety, which hinder their willingness to speak. This study aims to analyze the Grade IX Arabic textbook published by the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs in 2020 by identifying its dominance of grammatical aspects, analyzing its potential contribution to speaking anxiety, and formulating its pedagogical implications. Employing a library research design with a qualitative content analysis approach, data were gathered through documentation and close reading of the textbook, alongside relevant psycholinguistic literature. The findings reveal a significant structural imbalance, where a structural-grammatical orientation dominates through deductive presentation of taṣhrīf materials, mechanical sentence transformation exercises, and accuracy-based evaluation. Conversely, support for spontaneous oral communication remains limited and text-reproductive. Psycholinguistically, this rigid design triggers a fear of negative evaluation, a heightened affective filter, and double cognitive load. Consequently, the textbook's grammatical dominance potentially exacerbates speaking anxiety. Therefore, instructional materials need reconstruction by integrating grammar inductively and expanding functional communicative activities.]]>
