An Analysis of the Listening and Reading Sections of the Newly Published Japanese English Textbooks for Primary School

Abstract

In 2020, Japan started a new English curriculum in which English classes began from grade 5, based on the latest edition of the Course of Study (the guideline produced by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT). The objectives of this research paper are to examine seven sets of newly published English textbooks’ reading and listening sections to learn about their specific features, as well as their difficulty levels. The result demonstrates that in all seven sets of textbooks, the listening sections have far more volume of content than the reading sections. The readability tests indicate that the reading sections contain higher levels of sentences, which contradicts the authors’ initial impression. However, a careful study of the use of past tense verbs and prepositions in each section demonstrates that there are more prepositions in all seven sets of textbooks in the listening sections. The results indicate that past tense verbs and prepositions can be effective benchmarks to measure the readability level of these newly published English textbooks.