This research investigated consistency of achievement levels stated in the 2015 revised national curriculum of English, high school English textbooks, and the Korean College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) according to CEFR Levels. Based on CEFR levels, this study compared levels of targeted achievement standards in the national curriculum, focusing on reading passages in High School EnglishⅡ and CSAT implemented for three consecutive years (2021-2023). Results indicated that the reading section of textbooks and CSAT included a considerable portion of passages whose text difficulty levels were higher than CEFR B2, exceeding the achievement standards required for high school graduates. These results suggest that difficulty levels in the national curriculum, textbooks, and CSAT should be adjusted according to target levels of language proficiency based on CEFR levels so that learning burden of students can be lessened and competency-based English teaching and learning finally can be performed.

This study aims to investigate how multicultural aspects are dealt with in current elementary English textbooks. The cover pages, dialogues, main readings, and culture sections of a total of 10 elementary English textbooks for 5th and 6th graders were closely examined in terms of (1) the races and genders of the characters, (2) the cultural backgrounds of the contents, and (3) Bennett’s (2010) core values of multicultural education. The results revealed that each gender was equally represented and the textbooks present diverse cultural backgrounds in a balanced way. It was found, however, that there was an imbalance in terms of racial backgrounds. With respect to the core values of multicultural education, acceptance and appreciation of cultural diversity, and respect for human dignity and universal human rights were the top two values that appeared most frequently throughout the textbooks. Responsibility to a world community was the value that was comparatively hard to find in them. Detailed findings are discussed in greater depth, along with implications for elementary English education in Korea.

This study probes how cultural contents are represented in middle school English textbooks based on the 2015 revised national curriculum. To this end, culture-related sections of 15 textbooks were analyzed in terms of five aspects: cultural subject matters, cultural types, backgrounds, activities for cultural learning, and language integration. The results reveal that the middle school textbooks deal with everyday life of various cultures, including tasks for introducing Korean culture. The three culture types are provided at a relatively balanced ratio, but as the grade goes up, the portion of spiritual culture increases whereas that of material culture decreases. As for cultural background, non-English cultures in the outer and expanding circle are the most frequently presented. In the analysis of cultural learning activities, searching and communication activities connected to speaking and writing have a large portion, but experiential activities are rare. 45.5% of cultural activities are presented in a single communication skill and 54.5% of them are integrated into two or more skills. Finally, based on the study results, some suggestions for effective culture education to attract students' spontaneous participation in middle school English classes are presented.

This paper analyses the lexical verbs in the guided word list of the 2015 Revised English Curriculum and high school English textbooks on the basis of the high frequency 200 lexical verbs extracted from the core academic words in the Corpus of Contemporary American English [COCA]. Lexical verbs are key words in determining sentence structures and meanings. In particular, this research focuses on academic verbs the knowledge of which is important for EFL learners’ academic achievement. The following questions are dealt with in this paper: 1) What changes occur in the distribution of high frequency core academic verbs in the guided word list? 2) Which verbs are classified as career development and technical words? 3) What are the properties of the academic verbs used in the high school textbooks of <English>, <English I> and <English II> in terms of frequency? and 4) With regard to EFL learners’ vocabulary learning, why should we be concerned with academic verbs classified as elementary-level words? The findings reveal that 35% of the 200 core academic verbs are used in the series of high school English textbooks, which means that a thorough learning of the general lexical verbs is important from a pedagogical perspective in the EFL situation. Furthermore, a diverse use of more core academic verbs is required in high school English textbooks.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the readability of reading passages used in 5th and 6th grade elementary school English textbooks under the 2015 Revised National Curriculum. For this purpose, all the reading passages of each textbook were calculated with ATOS (Advantage-TASA Open Standard) formula as a readability index. The results of this study indicate that, firstly, the average readability score of 6th grade English textbooks is higher than that of 5th grade ones. Secondly, the readability of 6th grade English textbooks is about six months ahead of that of 5th grade ones. Thirdly, the readability scores are similar in all reading passages for 5th grade, while the readability scores of 6th grade differ from textbooks to textbooks. According to the textbook writers, the readability score of 6th grade textbooks is higher than that of 5th grade ones in four out of five textbooks. Lastly, In terms of the units in each textbook, the readability scores fluctuate and do not increase sequentially as expected.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine prominent features of frequency in the new vocabulary of the middle school English textbooks based on the 2007 revised national curriculum and thereby to provide meaningful data to be compared with those on the 2009 revised national curriculum. This study used an online software (Vocabprofile) to divide words into four categories by frequency: K1 (1-1,000), K2 (1,001-2,000), AWL (Academic Words List), and Off-List Words (the remainder). Salient features discovered from the frequency-based categorization of words in textbooks by grades or publishers were further examined for pedagogical implications regarding textbook writing and curriculum revisions in the future. The analysis has revealed the following results. K1 words accounted for the most among the words presented in English textbooks, reflecting the significance of the high-frequency words in L2 learning. The number of other words showed a steady increase as the grade gets higher. Finally, most textbooks presented multi-words as new vocabulary, which indicates the importance of idioms or collocations. The vocabulary analysis by frequency could be of use to textbook evaluation, considering the growing importance of frequency-based vocabulary teaching.

The purpose of this study was to analyze writing activities of 1st grade middle school English textbooks based on the achievement standards of the 2009 revised National Curriculum and provide suggestions for improvements of textbooks. In this study, seven textbooks out of twelve were selected and their writing activities were analyzed as to whether they stick to the guidelines of the 2009 revised National Curriculum. For this purpose, specific focuses of the current study were 1) to look into writing activities based on achievement standards stipulated in the 2009 revised National Curriculum, and 2) to investigate the ratio of integrated writing activities to separate writing activities ones. The results of the analysis revealed that most of the writing activities seemed suitable based on learners’ real-life situations for achievements standards; however, the types of writing activities were rather simple, mainly focusing on given words. Next, there were not only separate writing activities but also a variety of integrated activities such as listening-writing, speaking-writing, and reading-writing activities. At the end of the paper, a few suggestions were provided to improve the qualities of writing activities in the textbooks.

Paik Kyung-sook. 2012. Do they teach the prospective teachers properly?: Suggestions based on an analysis of the courses on culture at the English education departments of Korean colleges. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 20(2). pp. 239-268. This study analyses the contents of the courses on culture at the English education departments of Korean colleges to evaluate if the prospective teachers are learning properly what it takes for teaching culture. Referring to the relevant theories and the results of a pilot questionnaire on the practice and difficulties in culture education at Korean secondary schools, this study diagnoses the courses on culture(/culture teaching) by examining the contents of the appropriate syllabuses. The analysis shows that most departments offer a culture-related course or two, but mostly about culture on a macro-level. It also reveals that contents about the multicultural nature of the English speaking communities are not properly included and that the relevant teaching approaches/methods are rarely dealt with. The contents targeting the prospective teachers’ understanding of the ‘intercultural communicative competence’ were rarely found, which inevitably discloses the college educators’ lack of adequate concept of ‘culture education’ in this globalized era. This study finally suggests that the ethnographic perspective and knowledge along with the notion of ‘intercultural communicative competence’ serve as the key concepts in constructing a suitable model of culture education for the prospective teachers as well as the learners in Korea.(197)

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.

This study analyzed English words that are used in the middle school English text books of the 6th and the 7th National Curriculum in Korea. For this analysis, an English corpus of a total of 1,230,023 nodes was built out of 63 English textbooks of the 6th and the 7th National Curriculum. The study specifically investigated the following items for analysis: 1) tokens and types of words used in the middle school textbooks, 2) frequency of the words, and the numbers of new words introduced in each school-year, 3) high-frequency words in the textbooks with reference to those in large-scale general English corpora, 4) parts of speech of the words and their frequencies, and 5) the comparison of the words used in reading parts and listening parts. Analysis of the corpus revealed the following results. Regarding the average number of tokens and types, the textbooks based on the 7th Curriculum contain more than those based on the 6th Curriculum. As for the frequency of the repetition of words, the 6th curriculum textbooks are more than the 7th curriculum textbooks. Comparison of vocabularies used in the text corpus and in general large-scale English corpus shows that there are more similarities than differences.