중학교 영어교과서의 문화내용 분석

Abstract

ABSTRACT

An Analysis of the Cultural Contents of Middle School English Textbooks

Kim, Ji-yeon Adiviser: Prof. Yoo, Kwan-soo, Ph.D. Major in English Language Education Graduate school of Education, Chosun University

As globalization becomes more accelerated than ever before, the exchange of international dimensions is increasing rapidly in 21th century. In order for the appropriate activities beyond the national borders in the world stage, it is needed above all else that the language communication between different peoples is necessarily done fluently. This is why English as a lingua franca, the common language, becomes more and more important today. As the purpose and extent of using English are wide-ranging, it is a very important issue of the day that English should be understood not only for the good communication skills but also for the cultural-related skills of those living in English-speaking countries. That is, when people learn a foreign language, it is very important for them to also understand L2-culture. In this context, for our students, we have to correct, so to speak, the old and the harmful cultural elements in middle school English textbooks. For this purpose, we have to make several things clear in this thesis, what kind of cultural elements in middle school text book appear, whether those cultural elements are suitable for today, and which elements should be more complemented when we teach cultural elements to student? The purpose of this study is therefore, to analyze four different English text books used in middle school in Korea with the following criteria. 1. How frequently is the culture of target language introduced in each chapter. 2. Analysing what kind of culture is presented. 3. Categorizing according to subject matter, type, background aspects. 4. Checking how equally cultural contents is applied. 5. Suggesting a better idea for English education for middle school. The results of this study are as follows: First, the result of the subject matter, half of list of 19 items were not included in each textbook. Second, all of the textbooks were mostly biased towards one type. Third, unexpectedly, most textbooks did not mention background aspects of English and Korean culture.