Listening

Looking into the result of the analysis on the textbooks for grade 10, the total number of listening activities of “Practical English I” is found to be 80. The activities of listening for perception account for 20% in the textbook while those of listening for comprehension do 80%. “Listening and making short responses”

has 40 activities (50%) which is the most listening activity type. And it is followed by “listening and making long responses”, which has 24 activities (30%). Both the activity of recognizing a picture after listening and that of answering questions after listening appeared 18 times (22.5%) respectively, which are the most frequent one as a single listening activity.

Figure 10 An activity for communicative functions in Finnish textbook (Profiles 4, p75)

Figure 9 The section of teaching communicative functions in Korean textbook (Practical English II, p. 10)

The Finnish textbook “Profiles 1” has 18 listening activities in total. The activities of listening for perception account for about 16.7% in the textbook while those of listening for comprehension about 83.4%. “Listening and making long responses” has 13 activities (72.2%), which is the most listening activity type. The activity of answering question after listening appeared five times (27.8%), which is the most frequent one as a single listening activity. It is followed by the activity of completing the table or memo, which has four activities (22.2%). The following table shows the specific results of the analysis on the listening activities in Korean and Finnish textbooks for grade10.

Types of listeningactivities SpecificActivities PracticalEnglish I (K) Profiles 1 (F) Listening for

perception

Word level Perceivingsounds

and words 12 (15%) 3 (16.7%)

response Following the

written text 0 1 (5.6%)

Table 24 Listening activities in Korean and Finnish textbook for Grade 10

Examining the English textbooks for grade 11, the total number of listening activities of “Practical English II” is found to be 80. The activities of listening for perception account for 20% in the textbook while those of listening for

comprehension do 80%. “Listening and making short responses” has 45 activities (56.3%) which is the most listening activity type. It is followed by

“listening and making long responses”, which has 19 activities (23.8%). The activity of checking or putting a circle after listening appeared 23 times (28.8%) which is the most frequent one as a single listening activity.

The Finnish textbook “Profiles 4” has 20 listening activities in total. The activities of listening for perception account for 15% in the textbook while those of listening for comprehension do about 85%. “Listening and making long responses” has nine activities (45%), which is the most listening activity type.

“Listening and making short responses”, which has four activities (20%), follows it. Each activity for perceiving sounds and words, following the written text, answering the questions, and completing the table or memo appeared three times (15%), which is the most frequent one as a single listening activity.

The following table shows the specific results of the analysis on the listening activities in Korean and Finnish textbooks for grade11.

Types of listeningactivities SpecificActivities PracticalEnglish II (K) Profiles 4 (F) Listening for

perception

Word level Perceivingsounds

and words 12 (15%) 3 (15%)

response Following the

written text 0 3 (15%)

Table 25 Listening activities in Korean and Finnish textbook for Grade 11

What is noticeable in comparing listening activities in Finnish and Korean textbooks is the number of listening activities. Korean textbooks have much more listening activities than Finnish ones. That is because listening activities in Korean textbooks have short scripts and simple questions while those in

Finnish textbooks long scripts and various questions within an activity. The Finnish textbooks use many songs for listening activities and various activities for recognizing sounds, while Korean ones do not. It seems to be very useful for integrating the listening skill with other skills to discuss the meaning of parts of lyrics after listening to a song. In particular, the listening activity for perceiving Australian words appears effective for developing students’ intercultural communicative skills which is one of the key characteristics in foreign language subject that Finnish national curriculum emphasizes (Finnish National Board of Education, 2003). Both Finnish and Korean textbooks have abundant examples and authentic listening materials.

The use of authentic listening materials in both textbooks is considered positive in the perspective of CLT (Gómez-Rodríguez, 2010). The finding also suggests that Korean textbooks emphasize the horizontal dimension of second language acquisition (SLA) suggested by the Council of Europe (2001) while Finnish ones the vertical dimension of SLA since Korean textbooks provide more listening activities in a more inductive way so that students can improve the listening skill through encountering various authentic listening activities and Finnish textbooks provide long and complex activities to enhance learners’

listening proficiency. The listening activities in Korean textbooks tend to take the similar types of listening questions in Korean matriculation test or the national English ability test which has a limited amount of communicative exchange. The similar types of listening questions in Korean textbooks with Korean high-stakes tests can be explained by the term, “Washback”, which means the impact of high-stakes tests on teaching and learning in foreign language classrooms (Wall, 2012). The tests also seem to have an influence on the textbook design. As an author of the Korean textbooks, I could not help reflecting the types of high-stakes tests in making the questions in textbooks

since teachers, students and even publishers wanted the textbooks to be helpful for preparing the high-stakes tests.