코메트릭스(Coh-Metrix)를 이용한 중학교 영어 교과서 읽기 지문의 난이도 연계성 분석

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to analyze the continuity of Middle School English textbooks in Korea (i.e., from first to third grades), and to compare the level of difficulty among different publishers of textbooks. For the research method, five textbooks consisting of 10 units were selected and measured, using Coh-Metrix, a tool for corpus analysis. The textbooks were measured in terms of eleven indices under three categories: Word, Sentence, and Cohesion. To be more specific, the word category measured the number of words, words frequency for content words, type-token ratio, concreteness and imageability. The sentence category measured the number of sentences, the mean number of words of sentences, FRE and FKGL. Finally, the cohesion category measured argument overlap and LSA overlap. Based on these measures, the findings of this study can be shown in two parts: The continuity of grades and the continuity of grades among the textbooks by different publishers. With regard to the continuity among the grades, the results are as follows: In terms of the word category, only number of words and imageability indices were accomplished the continuity as grade advanced. In terms of the sentence category, all of these four sentence indices showed the continuity among the grades. Finally, in terms of the cohesion, both the argument overlap and the LSA overlap did not show the continuity. Next, with regard to the continuity of the level of difficulty of reading materials among different publishers of textbooks, the results are as follows: First, in terms of words, only the number of words index showed the continuity in all the textbooks analyzed. However, it showed a clear difference in regard to the total numbers of words students will learn in each respective textbook series so there seems to be some kind of reconstitution of this index. Second, in terms of sentence, except for the two textbooks, the number of sentences and the mean number of words of sentences showed the continuity of level of difficulty, but it appeared some deviations among each textbook series. In addition, no continuity on FRE and FKGL indices were found in all the textbooks examined. Lastly, it was necessary to control the level to improve the continuity because there was no or less difference on the measured values on the cohesion category. In conclusion, this study showed that the continuity of grades was not well composed based on 11 indices. After analyzing and comparing the continuity of the level of difficulty among each publishers, the C textbook showed the most continuity. Based on the above results, it would be helpful to write and select the textbooks which will be used on the 2015 Revised National English Curriculum.