중학교 영어교과서 및 활동책 문화내용 분석 및 학습자 인식 조사

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the cultural content in five second grade Middle School English Textbooks and Activity Books, and then examine learners’ awareness regarding the culture-related information in these English learning materials. The questionnaire survey sample consists of 100 second grade Middle School students who are using the revised textbooks. The questionnaire survey was modified on the basis of Lee (2004) and Park (2011). The questions ask about how the learners conceive the relationship between English learning and culture, the cultural contexts in the learning materials, and their favorable ways to approach cultural learning. Also the survey asks about the learners’ opinions of the need for cultural backgrounds and the cultural categories. The following are the findings from the research, based on the analysis on the English Textbooks and Activity Books: First, most of the textbooks, and activity books’ cultural category were focused on Norm culture, which suggests that the learning material needs to adopt more inclusive details and a broader diversity of the cultural categories. Second, about the cultural analysis of the language functions which is listening, speaking, reading, writing, the result showed that the reading sections had well-balanced cultural distribution. Yet the listening, speaking, writing section was focused mostly in behavioral culture. These are the findings from the research, based on the analysis on the learners’ questionnaire survey: First, learners seem to be aware of the necessity for cultural education and they indicated that the reason they study English is to communicate. Also they answered that by studying the cultural context they have benefited in learning and understanding English. However, there was a big gap between the cultural context materials that the learners prefer and the materials that were suggested in class. The learners replied that the cultural references in the text books were not attractive. For the cultural background research, the students wanted to learn different cultural background. Such as non-English speaking countries’ culture and expecially Korean culture. The final result of this study is that the learners intention to learn a language is high and they are willing to accept any educational cultural contexts. However, the text book cultural source attractiveness was low and the proportion of the three cultural section and therefore the textbooks and activity books should be modified. To make the learners interested to the context the text books should add more diversity of context data and sub-materials which suit the level of the learners.