Familiar Economics

Abstract

A number of English educators and institutions in Korea have realized the benefits of content-based language teaching. The current English curricula in Korea, however, concentrate more on teaching linguistic rules than content. Thus, people invest a great deal of money and time in studying English, but the overall level of communicative fluency remains low. Moreover, the lack of diversity of content-based textbooks and educational materials is an obstacle to be overcome in the Korean EFL environment. Therefore, if content-based textbooks that target certain levels are published, they can help foster content-based language teaching in Korea and the curricula that meet the books’ objectives would be coordinated. The textbook is designed for college students who are interested in studying economics in Korea, whose proficiency level is anticipated to be intermediate high in writing and advanced low in listening, reading and speaking according to ACTFL guidelines. According to ACTFL (2013), students at this proficiency level are expected to communicate and exchange information related to employment, current events, and matters of public and community interests with ease. They are also able to deal with a range of communicative tasks. They can read conventional narrative and descriptive texts with a clear underlying structure and high-frequency vocabulary, and orally comprehend the main facts and some supporting ideas. The writing level of the students is slightly lower than that of other skills in English. Thus, the students are able to create compositions and simple summaries related to the topics.