earticle

영어

This paper seeks to analyze the passive voice in English textbooks in terms of sufficiency, sequencing, variety, interest, authenticity, and appropriateness. A total of thirty textbooks was randomly chosen for the analysis, six exemplars being selected from each grade from intermediate middle school through advanced high school. The results show that the subtypes of passives presented were substantial enough to fully understand the nature of the passive, and that the various sub-types of passives were sequenced reasonably. However, limitations were revealed in providing enough variety of activities/exercises on the one hand and of visual aids on the other. The textbooks were also found to contain several non-authentic language patterns such as wrong choice of the verb, collocation problems, etc. More serious was not only heavy reliance on sentence-level mechanical practices, particularly conversion exercises, but also the lack of attention paid to function-oriented instructions on the passive. These findings are expected to contribute to the effective design of new textbooks under the revised curriculum.