| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 96 === ABSTRACT
This study aims to investigate the recycling of structures in the junior high school English textbooks and to provide pedagogical suggestions for textbook writers and language teachers. First, a questionnaire designed based on the “List of Suggested Grammar and Sentence Structures” appended to the Curriculum Guidelines was used as an instrument to investigate thirty English teachers’ perceptions regarding the troublesome structures for their students. Further, an in-depth content and quantitative analysis was conducted to investigate the recycling presentation of the five major troublesome structures for students in the textbooks, including (1) recycling distribution, (2) recycling frequency, (3) recycling rate, (4) spiral presentation, and (5) degree of contextualization for recycling. The textbooks being examined are from five publishers, including Longman, Joy, Kang-Hsuan, Nan-i, and Hess.
The five troublesome structures for junior high school students included present perfect, relative clause, passive voice, past perfect, wh-clause, and present/past participle as adjective. As past perfect is not targeted in all textbooks, it was excluded in the study; the rest of the five structures were the target structures in this study. Owing to the difficulty of these structures, it was supposed that adequate recycling should be provided in the textbooks. The recycling of the five structures was then examined after they are first taught.
The results of analysis can be summarized as follows. First, the distribution of recycled structures falls mostly in two kinds of lessons: lessons that provide spiral learning for the target structure, and review or recycle lessons that aim to review the structures. Second, the overall recycling frequencies of structures in textbooks from high to low are: Present perfect > Relative clause > Passive voice > Wh-clause > Present/Past participle as adjective. This order matches with teachers’ perceptions of the level of difficulty these structures are. This indicates that textbooks do emphasize more on the structures that are regarded by teachers to be troublesome. Third, the extent target structures are recycled in textbooks is as follows: Textbook K > Textbook N > Textbook L > Textbook J > Textbook H. Averagely, Textbook K, Textbook N, and Textbook L normally provide more recycling of target structures for learners compared to Textbook J and Textbook H. However, if considering the quality of recycling in the textbooks, Textbook N performs the best among all, for it provides at least a threshold of five exposures to a target structure in most lessons. Although Textbook K has the highest recycling rate, it does not show similar high quality of recycling. Fourth, Textbook L, Textbook K, and Textbook N tend to provide spiral learning for the structures, facilitating the recycling of the structures for students. With the spiral lesson, more recycling of the structures is provided. Fifth, the proportions for recycling structures in passages/dialogues in textbooks range between 30% and 55%. Although Textbook N and Textbook J tend to present the recycled structures in passages or dialogues, the percentages are only around 50%, showing the inadequacies of textbooks for presenting structures in large contexts, like passages and dialogues.
Overall, based on the research findings, some pedagogical implications are provided in the study for textbook writers and language teachers.
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