2009 개정 교육과정에 의한 중학교 영어 교과서 쓰기 활동 분석

Abstract

This study analyzes writing activities in recently published middle-school English textbooks, with a focus on how textbook activities encourage students to write; it then suggest the right directions for better English textbooks. For this purpose, I randomly selected three kinds of first to third grade textbooks based on the revised 2009 national curriculum and analyzed the writing activities in the textbooks according to the types of activities following Rivers' five writing instruction stages and Swales' genre-based writing activities. The results of the analysis are as follows: first, the textbooks most frequently contain guided writing and controlled writing activity but lack free writing. It is desirable for more challenging writing stages to be provided as the students progress from first to third grade. However, the textbooks provide different types of writing activities randomly and do not reflect the grades for which they are intended. Second, most of the writing activities are biased toward writing for academic purposes and writing for social relationships; the textbooks generally do not contain other topics that are also important for students' creative thinking and actual uses in real-life situations. Three suggestions can be made based on these results. First, the textbooks should gradually decrease the number of controlled writing activities and increase guided and free writing activities in a step-by-step fashion reflecting students' cognitive levels. Second, writing activities of various genres should be provided so that students can experience the full range of writing through the textbooks. Third, if the subjects of the writing activities can be connected from one unit to the next, not provided separately in each unit, students will learn how to think and how to write at the same time.