<![CDATA[Teaching Arabic speaking skills (maharah kalam) in boarding madrasah often stops at material mastery without cultivating sustained language habits. This article reports and analyses a mentoring programme for strengthening maharah kalam through active learning at Ma’had MAN 1 Jember, involving 295 students from the Religious Programme and the Bina Insan Cendekia Programme. The programme was designed as participatory action work employing a qualitative approach and a case study design. Data were gathered through layered participant observation, semi-structured interviews with purposively selected key informants, periodic focus group discussions, and documentation, and were analysed following data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing. Trustworthiness was maintained through source, technique, and time triangulation, member checking, and an audit trail. The findings show substantial change in the linguistic dimension — growth of active vocabulary, oral fluency, and coherence of ideas — as well as in the affective dimension, namely reduced language anxiety and increased willingness to speak. The analysis indicates that these gains did not stem from eight to ten mentoring sessions alone, but from the synergy between structured sessions and daily language exposure within the ma’had environment (bi’ah lughawiyyah), together with a cycle of programme adaptation guided by FGD results. The article proposes the PANDU-Kalam framework (Mapping, Adaptation, Normalisation of the language environment, Peer mentoring, and Participatory feedback) as a replicable model for other boarding madrasah.]]>
