Analysis of the grammar and expression in the 19th-century Korean textbook 『Fifty Helps』 : ‘2017 Applied Research for the International Standard Curriculum of Korean Language(Version 4)’

This study analysis the grading of grammar and expression items in the 19th-century Korean textbook Fifty Helps for the Beginner in the Use of the Korean Language, and attempts to verify whether Fifty Helps was a textbook for ‘beginners’ at the time, and ultimately reveals its value as a textbook for beginners in Korean. For this purpose, we conducted a study using the ‘Grammar Evaluation List’ of the ‘2017 Applied Research for the International Standard Curriculum of Korean Language(Version 4)’ as the basis for analysis, and found that ‘Fifty Helps’ had the highest percentage of grammar and expression items in the beginner level (levels 1-2) in all editions from the first edition (1896) to the sixth edition (1926). The fact that Fifty Helps contains a large number of grammatical and expressive items that correspond to the beginner level (level 1-2) in modern Korean language education confirms its character as an introductory textbook. In addition, the existing studies on Fifty Helps have mainly focused on the changes in the content areas between editions, but in this study, we found that different editions of the textbook specifically added grammar and expression items that reflected the changed linguistic reality of the time and supplemented the teaching content in a few cases.