Do Senior High School English Textbooks Sufficiently Prepare Students for the High-Stakes College Entrance Examinations? A Corpus-Based Analysis of Text Difficulty

高中英文教科書是否準備好學生面對高風險的大學入學考試？一個語料庫為本的文本困難度分析研究

程玉秀(Yuh-Show Cheng) ； 張盛傑(Sheng-Chieh Chang)

《教科書研究》 15卷1期 (2022/04) Pp. 43-80

https://doi.org/10.6481/JTR.202204_15(1).02

摘要

The aim of this study was to uncover how sufficiently senior high school English textbooks in Taiwan prepare students for reading the passages in the high-stakes college entrance examinations in terms of text difficulty. A corpus-based approach was adopted to compare the vocabulary load and readability of passages extracted from senior high school textbooks and from the English test papers of college entrance examinations. Two corpora were compiled: a textbook corpus comprising texts extracted from all five editions of Ministry of Education (MOE)-authorized senior high school textbooks and a test corpus containing all of the reading passages in the college entrance English tests from the 2002 to 2017 school years. The results indicate that the passages in the English textbooks do not match those in the tests in terms of the vocabulary load and several Coh-Metrix readability metrics. The reading passages in the English tests generally have lower overall readability, lower narrativity, and higher syntactic complexity than those in the textbooks. The test passages also require a much larger vocabulary size than the textbooks do. Implications of the findings for students, textbook writers, English teachers, and the MOE are provided.

關鍵字

corpus-based ； textbook analysis ； vocabulary load ； readability

並列摘要

本研究旨在發掘就文本困難度而言，臺灣高中英文教科書是否準備好學生閱讀大學入學考試英文試題之文本。以語料庫為本的方法，本研究建置了兩個語料庫：教科書語料庫和大學入學考試試題語料庫，進而比較高中教科書和大學入學考試試題英文文本之詞彙量和可讀性。教科書語料庫涵蓋研究期間市面流通的所有審定本高中英文教科書，共五套；試題語料庫則包含了2002年至2017年大學入學考試英文學測和指考的所有篇章。研究結果顯示高中英文教科書和大學入學考試的英文文本，在詞彙量和數個Coh-Metrix可讀性指標上有落差。學測和指考文本的整體可讀性和敘事性通常顯著低於教科書文本，但其語法複雜性則顯著高於教科書文本。閱讀學測和指考試題文本所需的詞彙量也遠高於閱讀教科書文本所需的詞彙量。文末，作者依據研究結果對學生、教科書編輯者、英語教師和教育部提出一些建議。

並列關鍵字

語料庫為本 ； 教科書分析 ； 詞彙量 ； 可讀性

參考文獻

Wang, C.-C. (2008). Communicative language teaching in Taiwan: Teacher conceptions and major challenges. Journal of Applied English, 1, 31-58. https://doi.org/10.29691/ JAE.200810.0003

Carver, R. P. (1994). Percentage of unknown vocabulary words in text as a function of the relative difficulty of the text: Implications for instruction. Journal of Literacy Research, 26(4), 413-437. https://doi.org/10.1080/10862969409547861

Chen, X., & Meurers, D. (2019). Linking text readability and learner proficiency using linguistic complexity feature vector distance. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 32, 418-447. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2018.1527358

Crossley, S. A., Greenfield, J., & McNamara, D. S. (2008). Assessing text readability using psycholinguistic indices. TESOL Quarterly, 42(3), 475-493.

Crossley, S. A., Louwerse, M. M., McCarthy, P. M., & McNamara, D. S. (2007). A linguistic analysis of simplified and authentic texts. The Modern Language Journal, 91(1), 15-30. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2007.00507.x