Foreign Language Instruction from a dynamic usage-based (DUB) perspective

In this chapter we combine ideas of usage based linguistics and dynamic systems theory to argue that language is a dynamic usage based system and L2 learning is a dynamic process. Two teaching approaches based on Dynamic Usage-based (DUB) principles with mainly implicit attention to form--a movie approach and the Accelerative Integrated Method--were compared with two more traditional teaching approaches. The results show that if effectiveness is operationalized as gain in general proficiency, both in spoken and written production, and if the intervention is at least one semester long, the DUB approaches are more effective than their traditional semi-communicative counterparts. We also argue that effects of such methods should not be measured in one-off interventions because implicit learning may take longer than explicit learning.