New JESLA article: Gombert, Keijzer & Verspoor (2024)

This study compares the effects of two instructional programs on speaking, listening, reading and writing skills after six years of instruction. The first is based on dynamic usage-based (DUB) principles, with a great deal of exposure and meaningful interaction and implicit attention to form. The second program is based on structure-based (SB) principles, with a great deal of explicit attention to form and forms. Rousse-Malpat et al. (2022) showed that after three years, a DUB program is more effective than an SB program on speaking and writing skills, but most teachers in their study switched to a SB approach because they were convinced this is necessary to meet Dutch central exams (Voogel, 2018). One teacher, however, continued with the DUB approach and compared several cohorts of SB and DUB students on both the standardized reading and listening tests and speaking and writing skills. The results of the current study show that the SB and DUB students perform similarly on reading, but DUB students outperform the SB on listening. In writing, the SB and DUB students perform similarly on holistic scores and accuracy, but the DUB students outperform the SB students in sentence length, text length, and the use of formulaic language. As expected, the DUB students outperform the SB students by far on speaking. The findings suggest that a communicative program with an emphasis on exposure, interaction and speaking does not have to be at the expense of reading and writing skills.