2009 개정 교육과정에 따른 초등학교 6학년과 중학교 1학년 영어 교과서 읽기 지문 분석

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze elementary school 6th grade and middle school 1st grade English textbooks in terms of readability and vocabulary difficulty. For this purpose, five elementary school textbooks and five middle school textbooks were selected and analyzed. The focus of the study was the reading sections of each textbook. In order to measure the readability of the texts, three readability indices were used. As for vocabulary difficulty, two different measurement instruments were used. The vocabulary list published by the Ministry of Education was used as an additional criterion. The vocabularies included in the list were compared with the vocabularies used in the reading section of the textbooks. The results of this study are as follows: First, in respect of readability, the readability of each index is similar across the textbooks. Measured readability indices showed that the readability of middle school textbooks is one year higher than that of elementary school textbooks. Considering that the grade standard index is based on the American school system, it is argued that the readability between the textbooks of each school has largely increased. However, the degree of readability fluctuated and did not increase sequentially as expected. Second, in terms of vocabulary difficulty, the total amount of vocabulary in the middle school textbooks was twice as much as that of the elementary school textbooks. Several suggestions are made as follows: First, the readability of the units should be increased sequentially in accordance with the order of the units to account for the learning process. Second, the amount of vocabulary used in texts should correspond to students’ grades. Thus, it is recommended that the length of elementary school texts be extended. Also, for elementary school textbooks, vocabularies should be recycled within the passage, and for middle school textbooks, repetition and a wide range of vocabulary occurrences within the text is recommended.