This article intends to analyze how the writing part is treated in Korean textbooks in order to figure out its problems. Based on this, it will provide support for teachers to select or reorganize textbooks afterwards and will suggest ways to improve ...
This article intends to analyze how the writing part is treated in Korean textbooks in order to figure out its problems. Based on this, it will provide support for teachers to select or reorganize textbooks afterwards and will suggest ways to improve the production of textbooks. To achieve the goal, this selected 11 kinds of basic level Korean textbooks, examined their organizational system and the relative importance of writing in them, and analyzed the types of writing activities concretely.
Analyzing the writing parts of the textbooks with six criteria, this study has gained the following results.
First, according to the investigation of their organizational system, the general organization of all the textbooks can be divided into three parts: the former part of the main unit, the main unit, and the latter part of the main unit. The contents of them were different, however. The organization of a unit is getting diversified, and this can be found from the organization of conversation in the text and practice for grammar use.
Second, the result of examining the position of ‘writing’ in the organization of a unit shows that writing is mainly dealt with in the ‘grammar’ part or ‘integration’.
Third, according to the result of analyzing the types of writing activities, the weight of writing itself quite differed by textbooks. Besides, even when the weight of writing was greater, this did not mean that it had a higher ratio of guided composition. The distribution of guided writing was also different by textbooks according to their units. Except for some of the textbooks, guided and free writing was not regularly included by lessons; this implies that they did not consider learners’ developmental stages.
Fourth, the result of analyzing its connection with other skills informed that seven of them showed the connection of controlled writing with all the other three areas: listening, reading, and speaking. Among the three areas, speaking had the greatest connection, and the next ones were reading and listening in order. ‘Completing the table after conversation’ of the items integrated with speaking exhibits problems that utterance can be differentiated by the items of questions and the number of students and the distribution of a unit is not consistent between textbooks. Guided writing showed the highest connection with reading and had the second highest with speaking though it indicated no connection with listening. Although the writing activities suggested in most of the textbooks consisted of activities connected with other skills, mostly two skills were integrated but those connected with three skills were rare.
Fifth, according to the result of analyzing visual aids used in writing activities, the higher use of pictures in controlled writing was conducted in <Sun Mun University 1>, <Konkuk University 1>, <Sungkyunkwan University 1>, <Yonsei University 1>, <Seoul National University 1>, <Korea University 1>, <Hankuk University of Foreign Studies 1>, <Kyung Hee University 1>, <Ihwa Woman’s University 1>, and <Hanyang University 1> in order. Guided writing showed different order, however. <Yonsei University 1> exhibited the highest use, and the next ones were <Sun Mun University 1>, <Konkuk University 1/ Kyung Hee University 1>, <Hanyang University 1>, <Hankuk University of Foreign Studies 1>, <Ihwa Woman’s University 1>, <Seoul National University 1>, and <Sungkyunkwan University 1> in order. The activities using visual aids like charts or graphs as well as pictures were chiefly composed of activities to have learners examine and write about the aids presented in the textbooks.
Sixth, the examination of ‘Korean alphabet’ resulted in significant difference among the textbooks. There was a textbook (<Hanyang University 1>) which did not present Korean alphabet at all. The textbooks suggesting it can be largely divided into the main unit and the preliminary section. Even when it was presented in the main unit, the quantity of the proper lesson was different. Among the textbooks presenting Korean alphabet in the preliminary section, some included the part that had a blank for writing practice while three of them (<Sungkyunkwan University 1>, <Ihwa Woman’s University 1>, <Yonsei University 1>) did not.
Based on the analysis result, this study will make the following suggestions.
First, it is needed to place a greater deal of weight on writing itself. For this, writing should be organized in higher connection with other three skills. It can be said that increasing the relative importance of writing is closely associated with integration. If writing is organized in higher connection with other three skills like previous ‘reading and speaking’ or ‘listening and speaking’ changed into ‘reading, writing, and speaking’ or ‘listening, writing, and speaking’, the weight of writing will be increased in greater integration. When learners get to encounter activities integrating various linguistic skills like this, they will have opportunities to practice more deepened writing activities.
Second, the organization of guided writing should be more uniformly distributed. It is also necessary to provide learners with writing activities constantly so that they can learn it in phased integration. Sudden rise or fall should not exist in the number of items as well.
Third, it is thought that students’ active participation will be needed in utilizing charts or graphs as well as pictures. It will be more effective to increase activities in which learners draw pictures corresponding to their own situation, not just remaining in the activities in which they have to examine and write about visual aids simply presented in textbooks.
，韩语论文，韩语论文 |
