A study on the correlation between the introduction order of English morphemes in the English textbook for the 7th graders and the natural order hypothesis

중학교 1학년 영어 교과서의 영어 형태소 도입 순위와 자연적 순서 가설과의 상관관계 연구

The purpose of this study is to investigate the correlation between the introduction order of 9 English morphemes in the English textbook used in the middle school and the learning order of the morphemes by the 7th graders learning English as a foreign language. The subjects are 139 students in two middle schools, who learn English with different textbooks. The introduction order of each morpheme in two textbooks was examined according to its quantity and frequency. Data on the real learning order were collected through the written SLOPE test, and each morpheme was ranked by its group score. The introduction order of each morpheme in the textbook and the real learning order were analyzed by Spearman rank order correlation. It was shown that the correlation between the two was very low. This means that those textbooks do not take the learning order of English morphemes into account. Also it was shown that in the earlier stage of learning English the introduction order of each morpheme in the textbook had much influence on its learning order, but in the later stage such influence reduced gradually. This means that the learning order of English morphemes approaches the natural order as time passes by.