An Examination of English Teaching Materials with Focus on the Prosodic and Discourse Features

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

By the advent of spoken corpora, resources and descriptions of native speakers’ English usage are widely available. The insights from these corpora have been rarely applied to the design of textbooks published for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Consequently, the present study aims to apply these insights to the examination of middle school English textbooks used in Korea. This study investigates whether the EFL learners’ target language materials reflect authentic usages of native English speakers. The presentations of prosodic and discourse features in the conversation sections of the middle school English textbooks were carefully examined through comparison with a native speaker corpus, Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (LGSWE). A total of fifteen middle school English textbooks from five publishers (first through third grade) were selected based on responses from 178 middle school students from survey questionnaires. The findings show a big gap between the middle school English textbooks and the authentic usage of English. The study builds its foundation upon the importance of providing EFL learners with authentic language materials to facilitate their communicative competence in the target language.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 Carter, R., "Vocabulary and language teaching" London: Longman 1988

2 Morrison, B., "Using news broadcasts for authentic listening comprehension" 43 (43): 14-18, 1989

3 Timmis, I., "Towards a framework for teaching spoken grammar" 59 (59): 117-124, 2005

4 Canale, M., "Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing" 1 : 1-47, 1980

5 Kreidler, C., "The pronunciation of English: A course book in phonetics" UK: Blackwell 2003

6 Berwick, R., "The grammatical basis of linguistic performance: Language use and acquisition" Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.T Press 1984

7 Peacock, M., "The effect of authentic materials on the motivation of EFL learners" 51 (51): 144-154, 1997

8 Rogers, H., "The Sounds of language: An introduction to phonetics" Harrow, England; New York: Longman 2000

9 Allen, J., "Teaching the communicative use of English, The communicative approach to language teaching" Oxford: Oxford University Press 124-142, 1979

10 Hedge, T., "Teaching and learning in the language classroom" New York: Oxford University Press 2000

11 San, D., "San, D., Kim, H., & Nathan, S. (2005). Stress and syllable structure in English: Approaches to phonological variations. Retrieved June 30, 2007, from the World Wide Web"

12 Hahn, L., "Primary stress and intelligibility: Research to motivate the teaching of suprasegmentals" 38 (38): 201-223, 2004

13 Wichmann, A., "Please ? From courtesy to appeal:The role of Please — From courtesy to appeal: The role of intonation in the expression of attitudinal meaning" 9 (9): 229-253, 2005

14 Carter, R., "Orders of reality: CANCODE, communication, and culture" 52 (52): 43-56, 1998

15 Hymes, D., "On communicative competence, Sociolinguistics" Harmondsworth: Penguin 269-293, 1972

16 Chang, K., "Middle school English 1,2,3" Seoul: Kumsung 2000

17 Lee, S., "Middle school English 1, 2, 3" Seoul: Jihak. 2000

18 Kim, S., "Middle school English 1, 2, 3" Seoul: Doosan 2000

19 Kang, H., "Middle school English 1, 2, 3" Seoul: Daehan 2000

20 Lee, B., "Middle school English 1, 2, 3" Seoul: Chunjae 2000

21 Biber, D., "Longman grammar of spoken and written English" London: Longman 1999

22 MacIntyre, P., "How does anxiety affect second language learning? A reply to Sparks and Ganschow" 79 (79): 90-99, 1995

23 Jung, E. H., "Exploring textbooks and methods for teaching communicative functions" 49 (49): 1005-1020, 2003

24 Carter, R., "Exploring spoken English" Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997

25 Branden, K., "Does negotiation of meaning promote reading comprehension?: A study of multilingual primary school classes" 35 (35): 426-443, 2000

26 Richards, J., "Approaches and methods in language teaching" New York: Cambridge University Press 2001

27 Morton, R., "Abstracts as authentic material for EAP classes" 53 (53): 177-182, 1999

28 Roca, I., "A course in phonology" UK: Blackwell 1999

29 Gilmore, A., "A comparison of textbook and authentic interactions" 58 (58): 363-374, 2004