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.

The purpose of this study is to explore inter-grade dividing criteria of the 2015 grade group elementary English textbooks. Elementary English textbooks consist of two grade groups: the 3rd and 4th grade group and the 5th and 6th grade group. L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer(L2SCA) is utilized to investigate the dividing criteria of the communicative functions implemented in these textbooks. Subjects of the analysis were the listening dialogues for their structural sequencing of 3rd to 4th graders and 5th to 6th graders separately within their own grade groups. Data were processed and analyzed using SPSS 25.0 and independent sample t tests for inter-grade textbooks for 14 L2SCA statistical indices. The findings are: 6 indices out of the 14 L2SCA statistical indices turn out to be critical for dividing the 2015 grade group elementary English textbooks. The 6 indices are mean clause length, mean sentence length, mean t-unit length, mean complex noun phrasal number per phrase and per t-unit and mean number of verb phrases per t-unit. Based on the findings, it is suggested that a standardized criteria derived from these 6 indices can be provided as an inter-grade dividing criteria of the 2015 grade group elementary English textbooks.

This study analyses the communicative functions of listening scripts extracted from the 2015 elementary school English 6 and middle school English 1 textbooks in terms of continuity. Auditory data corpora were drawn from all five elementary school English textbooks and five most widely used middle school English textbooks. Each sentence of listening scripts was manually tagged based on the classification of communication functions presented in the 2015 Revised National Curriculum. The corpora were analyzed using 14 syntactic complexity measures with the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (Lu, 2010). The findings of this study show that the continuity between the elementary school English 6 and the middle school English 1 textbooks is relatively well-organized. However, concerning the sequence, the elementary school English 6 was found to be more complex than the middle school English 1 in terms of syntactic complexity. It is suggested that future textbook development should correct the reversed complexity in listening scripts found in this study.

This study examined how teaching and learning activities in primary English textbooks include the components of creativity and character building. Three third and fourth grade level textbooks based on the 2015 revised curriculum were analyzed in order to find the proportions of the components of creativity and character building, and the types of learning activities that embody those components were analyzed by examining the teachers’ guides. The analysis revealed that all of the textbooks examined included diverse components that were intented to increase creativity, among which components stimulating divergent thinking and originality were a high proportion, while convergent thinking and dispositional aspects appeared less frequently. Among character building components, care-forgiveness and responsibility were two of the more popular components, while honesty and moral judgment were few and far between. From these findings, this study suggests that the components of creativity and character building should be more evenly distributed across textbook activities since they should be of equal importance in education.

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.

This study examines the difficulty of reading text in elementary school English textbooks. Four elementary school English textbook series published by three publishers were evaluated by Word Critical Factor (WCF). WCF considers cognitive demands for word recognition; it assesses the match of linguistic content in the text with the phonetically regular and high-frequency words that are associated with particular stages of reading development. For the analysis, all of the words that appeared in the reading and writing sections from four elementary school English textbooks were analyzed by two criteria, that is, the ratio of high frequency words and phonetically regular words among 100 running words, and the number of unique words in each textbook. The results showed that all four textbooks’ difficulty levels were very high considering the learner’s reading ability. This was due to the textbooks having a low repetition of words and also the complicated vowel patterns that were above the reading abilities of students. All of these factors combined are what have caused the difficulties presented in English textbooks. In conclusion, although the reading text introduces a variety of genres and activities for the development of reading skills, most reading text could not assist the reader’s cognitive processing.

The present study sought to examine the continuity of the English textbooks of the elementary school 6th grade and the middle school 1st grade by analyzing the readability and vocabulary difficulty of their reading passages. It investigated the continuity between textbooks of the two grades and among chapters of each textbook. For the analysis, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Index was used to measure the readability of reading passages, whereas vocabulary difficulty was measured in terms of TTR (type-token ratio) and frequency by using VocabProfile. The results showed that the readability of middle school textbooks was one point higher than that of elementary school textbooks. Given that the readability index is based on the American school system, the increase in readability index between grades can be seen as large gap. In terms of vocabulary difficulty, the total amount of vocabulary in the middle school textbooks was three times as much as that of the elementary school textbooks. Second, readability index fluctuated across the chapters of each textbook, while the TTR was found to be higher in the former chapters than in the latter chapters in elementary school textbooks. All these could lead to learning difficulties for students. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

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.

The purpose of this study is to propose the development phases and the directions of the electronic textbook for English education. In order to achieve this purpose, above all, the conception of electronic textbook based on electronic book is defined. Second, the electronic and traditional printed textbook is compared. Third, the types of electronic textbook are classified, and the practical process of developing CD-ROM titles in the primary English education is presented. In this study, it is suggested that there are six phases in the development phases of the electronic textbook: analysis - design - development - experiment - evaluation - revise - application. Furthermore, the directions of the electronic textbook are proposed in terms of the design of learning contents, functional components, and technical components systematically. Particularly, learning contents based on the national curriculum should be designed in detail. Accordingly, the characteristics of English education and the possibility of application should be considered in designing the electronic textbook.

The purpose of this study is to find out what characteristics of the communicative functions are presented and how these functions are reflected in the elementary school English textbooks based on the 2015 Revised National Curriculum. For this purpose, 20 elementary school English textbooks(5 different textbooks from the third to sixth grade) are analyzed and compared. For data analysis, 11 upper categories and 77 subcategories of communicative functions presented in the 2015 Revised National Curriculum are used. The results represent that first, no grade contains all 11 upper categories of communicative functions in the textbooks. Second, the communicative functions presented in the textbook have a wide variation in the frequency of presentation among the upper categories and subcategories. Third, there are no textbooks that reflected all 77 subcategories of communicative functions, and the degree of reflection in each textbook differs. This study suggests that more various examples are needed and organized in the textbooks in order to foster learners’ basic communicative competence, and connectivity and continuity of communicative functions among grades should be considered when organizing textbooks.

In an attempt to solve the problem of various English spellings of Korean names of landmarks and geographical locations used for maps, road signs and guidebooks with the lack of standardization, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism enacted the MCST instruction no. 279, an English translation guideline for public sector translation, on December 29, 2015. On September 23, 2015, the Ministry of Education announced a new national curriculum for elementary and secondary schools, Proclamation of the Ministry of Education #2015-74. This revised national curriculum for Elementary English textbooks will take effect on March 1, 2018. The main purpose of this paper is threefold: i) to review the English Translation Guideline for Public Sector Translation proposed by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, ii) to analyze English spelling of Korean culture-related terms from 5 elementary school English textbooks which are currently used according to the English Translation Guideline, and iii) to suggest how to write Korean culture-related terms for new elementary school English textbooks which will be published after 2018 according to the 2015 Revised National Curriculum.

본 연구의 목적은 2015 개정 영어과 교육과정에 따른 초등영어교과서 개발을 위해 2009 초 등영어 교육과정에 따른 초등학교 4학년용 4종 검정 영어교과서의 언어기능 통합 활동들을 분 석하는 것이다. 4종 검정 영어교과서에 제시되어 있는 활동들의 언어기능 통합정도를 차시별로 분석하였으며, 2개 이상 언어기능이 통합된 활동들의 집단 구성 및 활동 유형도 분석하였다. 분석 결과, 첫째, 차시별 기능 통합 정도의 경우, 1, 2차시에는 듣기 활동과 듣기+말하기 통합 활동의 비중이 높았지만, 3차시에는 통합 활동 유형이 다양해졌다. 둘째, 집단 구성의 경우, 개 별 활동이 346회로 가장 높은 비중을 차지했고, 짝 활동이 203회로 나타났다. 셋째, 활동 유형 을 분석한 결과, practice 빈도가 274회, task 빈도가 113회로 나타났다. 초등 영어 교과서에서 바람직한 언어기능 통합 활동의 전개 방식으로 고려되어야 할 점은 다음과 같다. 2～4개 언어 기능이 통합된 활동, 상호 의사소통을 주고받을 수 있는 짝, 소집단 및 전체 활동, 그리고 게 임, 노래, 역할극 등 다양한 유형의 활동 비중을 높인다면 초등 영어 교육 목표를 달성하는데 매우 효과적일 것이다.