A Quantitative Analysis of Nineteen Japanese Historical Primary School English-as-a-Foreign-Language Textbooks

Abstract

The authors of this paper aim to quantitatively analyse the features of nineteen Japanese historical primary English textbooks. They focus particularly on their homogeneities and differences. They further compare the features of these textbooks with the historical girls’ middle-grade school textbook and the current junior high school textbook. The following were the obtained results. First, the textual correspondence analysis proved capable of differentiating the features of the twenty-six historical or current textbooks in focus. In particular, the bipolar coordinate map indicated that the two dimensions, difficult (+) vs. easy (-) axis, and passage-based (+) vs. dialogue-based (-) axis, contributed to differentiating between the inter-relationships. Secondly, although Books 2 and 3 of the currently used textbooks proved to be similar to the majority group of the historical textbooks, Book 1 proved to be different from the historical ones, both in the bipolar coordinate analysis and the all-features-based dendrogram analysis. Thirdly, the four volumes of the historical girls’ textbook, Tsuda 1, 2, 3, and 4, proved to be similar to the majority of the historical primary school textbooks, both in the bipolar coordinate analysis and the cluster analysis. Finally, for the theoretical implications and practical use of the present study, it was demonstrated that textual correspondence analysis is a powerful tool for quantitative analysis and the evaluation of Japanese EFL textbooks, and that “difficulty vs. easiness” and “passage-based vs. dialogue-based” were useful viewpoints for EFL teachers and educators in describing and grasping Japanese EFL textbooks.