An Analysis of Korean High School English Textbooks under the 7th Curriculum

An Analysis of Korean High School English Textbooks under the 7th Curriculum

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. It examines newly published high school English textbooks both to ascertain if they satisfy the 1997 Ministry of Education requirements for the 7th National Curriculum Revision and to investigate their strengths and weaknesses. For the analysis, five currently used and nationally available English textbooks were chosen at random. Forty-five English teachers from sixteen local Susan high schools participated in a teacher questionnaire. The results show the newly developed textbooks to be superior to those previously developed in language authenticity, individualization of types and levels of activity tasks adopted, and in the availability of accompanying teacher's guides and CD-ROMs. However, the textbooks were also found to have some weaknesses such as misprinted illustrations and incorrect recordings. In addition, they fail to take into account the lack of facilities required to accommodate a balanced use of multimedia materials. Although this study is limited to examining five textbooks, its findings will shed light on improving the quality of textbook publishing in Korea and help high-school English teachers to effectively utilize textbooks, teaching manuals, and CD-ROM materials in their instruction.