This study aims to examine how authentically Korean language textbooks reflect real-life conversational interaction, particularly in the listening and speaking dialogue sections. A total of 3,847 dialogues were analyzed from 20 volumes across five Korean language textbook series published within the last ten years. The analysis revealed that approximately 89.7% of all dialogues were structured around the “question-answer” adjacency pair, while interaction types such as “request-acceptance/refusal” and “accusation-denial/acknowledgment” accounted for less than 5%. Notably, the frequency of question-answer structures declined in listening dialogues as textbook levels progressed from beginner to intermediate, whereas a slight increase was observed in speaking dialogues, with variability across textbooks. Taking “inquiry” as the core discourse function of the question-answer pair, the study evaluated the differences between textbook dialogues and authentic discourse using criteria such as turn-taking flexibility, discourse progression, backchanneling, and content-based authenticity. Findings indicated that textbook dialogues lacked features common in natural spoken discourse, such as adaptive turn-taking, contextually appropriate listener responses, interactive structure, and pragmatic coherence. Furthermore, natural spoken phenomena like self-repair and repetition were underrepresented. These findings suggest that to enhance learners’ communicative competence, Korean language textbooks should more faithfully reflect the interactive and contextual nature of real-life spoken discourse. The study proposes principles for constructing dialogue content based on authentic conversation and offers practical guidance for more effective textbook development.
Bak et al. (Sun,) studied this question.