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 theDUB-CALLprogram was tested in asemester-longexperiment, comparing it with ateacher-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 apre-postdesign with an objective General English Proficiency (GEP) test and a writing task. The results show that the students in theDUB-CALLcondition performed significantly better on the GEP test than the students in the twoteacher-frontedclasses. The results of the writing tests show that all groups improved significantly, but here there were no differences among groups.