The purpose of this study is to present the importance of stress in communicative language teaching and to find out how pronunciation and English stress are presented in English textbooks for Korean middle school students. To achieve this goal, eighte...
The purpose of this study is to present the importance of stress in communicative language teaching and to find out how pronunciation and English stress are presented in English textbooks for Korean middle school students. To achieve this goal, eighteen middle school English textbooks were used for analysis and they were analyzed based on three factors: first, the amount of pronunciation section provided in the textbooks, second, the kind of stress types that are presented in the textbooks, third, whether the textbooks offer various examples and clear explanations for students.
Chapter one is the introductory part of this thesis, presenting the purpose of this study. Beginning with the definition of stress, chapter two provides the theories, rules, functions and types of English stress. Moreover, the differences between Korean stress and English stress are discussed. Chapter three shows the statistic evidence of selecting the eighteen textbooks from six publishers (three texts per publisher; 7th, 8th, 9th grades). The textbooks all conform to the 2009 revised curriculum of Ministry of Education and currently are being used at English classes in Korean middle schools. Chapter four presents the results of the eighteen textbook analyses. The analyses focused on the amount and the content of English stress presented in the textbooks. Finally, chapter five gives an overall summary of the study with some future research implications.
The results of this thesis are as follows. First, in order to improve students' communicative competence it is important for students to learn suprasegmental features such as stress. However the pronunciation parts were very limited(less than 2% in a lesson) in the present eighteen textbooks. Some textbooks provided no sections on pronunciation at all. Also, textbooks offered only words or sentences in a corner of the textbook page without any explanations. Second, most textbooks focused only on one type of stress patterns, such as word stress or sentence stress. Furthermore, some stress examples have the potential of causing more confusion among the students because textbooks ignored the general rules of stress. One of which was the standardized transcription method of stress. Thus, the students are only allowed to just listen and repeat a word or a sentence with stress during class lessons. The students were an able to learn about the basic rules of stress in the given textbooks, unless teachers use supplementary materials and take the time to explain in class. Third, the frequency of the stress presentation in the textbooks are very limited. Only one publisher’s textbook (textbook D) dealt with stress in every chapter from the 7th to 9th grade textbooks. Other publishers’ textbooks presented stress in just one or two lessons. Some barely had any. Moreover, the explanations of stress were quite unsystematic and limited.
In conclusion, to improve students' communicative competence in English, this study suggests the following. First, since all eighteen textbooks do not have sufficient amount of materials for teaching pronunciation, textbooks should increase pronunciation sections including stress materials. Next, the transcription method of stress should be more clear and precise in textbooks to reduce students' confusion. Finally, textbooks need to expand the scope of English stress to prepare for various communication situations. Furthermore, more teaching methods and supplementary materials about stress need to be developed to help students achieve communicative competence. All in all, the communicative value of stress should be widely recognized among teachers and students so that the goal(communication) for learning a foreign language(English) will be achieved.
，韩语论文，韩语论文 |
