It has been reported that primary school students have difficulties in the reading process and their interests and achievement in reading is low, in spite of the various methods that have been introduced. This study aims to examine the reading approaches at the primary school level. To achieve this purpose, the primary English curriculum and textbooks were analyzed in order to explore the approaches that were adopted for primary English reading. The textbooks were analyzed in two aspects: the selection of words and the teaching methods for reading. The data revealed that the curriculum looked well-structured according to the developmental stages of reading, but that the textbooks did not facilitate reading for early readers. Although the reading text increased gradually from the letter to the sentence level, the words in each unit were not organized to help readers recognize the text efficiently which impinged on the students’ reading comprehension. Since words at each unit were selected meaning-based, students had to memorize them as a unitary whole. On the other hand, it was rare to find words structured on the basis of letter-sound relations between words. This lack of structure prevented students from recognizing the alphabetic principles of English. As a result, the textbooks did not consider the bottom-up skills at all in its development process. Therefore, students failed to acquire the basic principles of alphabetic language in the early reading stage. Some suggestions for curriculum and textbook development are presented in the end.

Abstract
Ⅰ. 초등영어 읽기 학습의 문제점
Ⅱ. 초등영어 읽기 연구의 고찰
Ⅲ. 영어 교과서의 읽기 내용 및 활동 분석
Ⅳ. 결론
참고 문헌
필자소개

• 이윤(한국교육과정평가원) | Lee Yoon