Browsing by Subject "Communicative approach"

English has become a global language, and students around the world know English is an essential foreign language to expand their knowledge. For the same reason, English has been the most common foreign language that students learn in South Korea and Finland. The purpose of this master’s thesis is to examine the curricula in South Korea and Finland to see the similarities and differences of the two countries’ English education. Although both countries focus on teaching English by using the communicative approach, their outputs in English education differ from each other. The study analyzes the curricula and textbooks by using Curriculum-Analysis Procedure. Then, the study analyzes the textbooks based on Littlejohn’s task analysis sheet. According to the analysis, the Finnish curriculum provides more specific learning goals than the Korean curriculum even though the Finnish curriculum does not specify teaching methods to teachers. The Korean curriculum provides specific word limitations for each level, and it provides specific teaching methods. However, the Korean curriculum’s learning goals are rather vague. The analysis on the textbooks suggests an interesting result. Although the Korean textbooks provide a higher number of oral tasks than the Finnish textbooks, the results demonstrate that the Korean textbooks are focused on repetition. Also, the Korean textbooks are quite regulated since the tasks ask students to focus on certain task types. On the contrary, the Finnish textbooks include a smaller number of oral tasks than the Korean textbooks, but the oral tasks encourage students to produce their own sentences rather than focusing on form. The Finnish textbooks try to provide as diverse task types as possible.