Effectiveness of a dynamic usage based computer assisted language program

Abstract

The current paper explores whether a Dynamic Usage Based (DUB) approach – which takes authentic meaningful language use with repetition and scaffolding for comprehension as its basis – can also be implemented in a CALL environment. The effectiveness of the DUB-CALL program was tested in a semester-long experiment, comparing it with a teacher-fronted DUB program (using the same materials as the CALL program) and a traditional CLT program; 228 university undergraduates in Sri Lanka participated. Language gains were assessed in a pre-post design with an objective General English Proficiency (GEP) test and a writing task. The results show that the students in the DUB-CALL condition performed significantly better on the GEP test than the students in the two teacher-fronted classes. The results of the writing tests show that all groups improved significantly, but here there were no differences among groups.