제 7차 개정교육과정에 따른 중학교 영어 교과서 쓰기 활동 분석

Abstract

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the writing activities in middle school English textbooks and activity books for first and second graders published on the basis of the 7th Revised National Curriculum. The writing activities in 12 randomly selected textbooks and activity books were examined according to the following three criteria: achievement standards of the 7th Revised National Curriculum, types of writing, and the proportion of language skills integrated with one another. The results of this study are as follows: first, a large proportion of the writing activities fall under controlled writing, which leads to a relatively lower percentage of guided and free writing. Free writing activities are especially scarce in all the target textbooks and activity books. Most of the controlled writing activities consist of blank-filling and sentence-level writing. Second, no textbooks or activity books perfectly conform to all the achievement standards that the 7th Revised National Curriculum provides. A large number of the activities deal with the same one, two or three achievement standards at most, which mainly involve completing sentences in the same way that the result of the first analysis shows above. Third, more than half of the writing activities are related to reading skills. Integration of two skills such as reading-writing, listening-writing, and speaking-writing is more common than integration of three skills. None of the textbooks or activity books has any four-skill-integrated activities. Based on the above findings, this study suggests the following: first, in order to promote students' participation in writing, it is necessary that the writing materials and contents are relevant and meaningful to students' lives. Cutting down on the proportion of activities such as answering reading comprehension questions or fill-in-the-blanks and offering more guided writing activities and free writing activities will help students engage in the activities and overcome the fear of self-writing. Second, the National Curriculum should offer achievement standards that better reflect the circumstances of our students and education sites. It should also specify the types and examples of writing activities to clarify the achievement standards, and therefore correspond with the direction intended by the National Curriculum. Third, textbooks and activity books should contain more pair and group activities. These activities facilitate collaborative learning and process-oriented writing, and also allow teachers opportunities for modification and adaptation of the textbooks. Moreover, they are effective activities in that writing can be readily integrated with the other language skills. Finally, in order to achieve the goal of communicative competence through writing, the authenticity of the language and activities in the textbooks needs to be increased. That way, students can have access to more real life use of English while improving their command of the language.