2009 개정 교육과정에 따른 중학교 1학년 교과서 분석

Abstract

An Analysis of First Year Middle School English Textbooks Based on the 2009 Curriculum Revision: Focus on Dialogues for Communicability in Speaking

Nam-young Park

Graduate School of Education Pukyong National University

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to discover prominent features within the content of first year middle school English textbooks based on the 2009 Revised National Curriculum, and thereby to draw several implications with respect to the improvement of the middle school English textbooks for future curriculum revisions. In order to achieve this purpose, five middle school English textbooks produced by five publishers which have been most widely used across Busan were selected and analyzed. The dialog contents in the speaking sections were categorized into two ways: One is to divide the dialogue by its length considering wether or not they consist of more or less 2 turns. The other is to divide the dialogue by its activity types. The collected data based on the above criteria were further analyzed by the communicative target language frequency and sociolinguistic elements. The findings from the data analysis are as follows: First, the Speaking Activity type was composed of two versions, meaningful practice and communicative practice. The meaningful practice represented doubled than the communicative practice. It seems to show that the utterances was given to practice enough in comparatively short and less consistent contexts. In addition, the communicative target language accounted for higher or lower frequency along the dialogue's Speaking Activity type. The length of the dialogues was divided into less than 2-turn dialogues and more than 2-turn dialogues. The communicative target language appeared proximately 4~5% in the less than 2-turn dialogues when it appeared about 2% in more than 2-turn dialogues. The longer turned-dialogues seem to provide a less chance to practice them. Its frequency arranges differently among textbooks by each gender. The gap between man and woman is less than 10%. Thus, it seems difficult to draw any conclusive remark on inequality. Second, the sociolinguistic analysis of the textbooks seem to indicate that the revised curriculum has updated several sociolinguistic elements for middle school students’ daily environments in order to familiarize them with communication activities. For example, the analyzed textbooks seem to provide several new places and 3 characters with 'a-b-c turn taking type' in one dialogue. It was still represented in a limited fashion with lack of authentic factors. The places of where dialogues take place were changed for reflecting middle school life but they still need to be more various and include actual context such as two-bounded spaces reflecting the telephone conversation and bus stop. 'The a-b turn-taking type' was most popular among textbooks while 'the a-b-c turn-taking type' was very rare. It seems to show that pair-work activities were encouraged. The differences between speaker a's utterances and speaker b's utterances averaged 15. Thus teachers should consider the differences to provide equal speaking opportunities. Based on the above findings, the following suggestions can be made: The dialogues can be effective and meaningful samples for communicative practice when they consisted of authentic elements and gradual appearance of the target communicative language. More authentic statistics could be interweaved in the dialogues to provide more diverse patterns for communicative ability. Not only the textbooks but also the teachers should be more sensitive to how the communicative language revealed to help the learner's acquisition. Well-weaved dialogues could motivate the learner's participation actively. When a model for dialogues is developed, it would be better if the learners choose the most appropriate dialogues. Then, it would help facilitate their communicative ability for daily life as the 2009 Revised National Curriculum emphasize. Finally, further research is suggested in terms of how the communicative target language varieties gradually become more complex and their contents increase additively as the chapters progress and even across the grade.