Examining the Effects of Automatic Speech Recognition Technology on Learners’ Lexical Diversity

Abstract

A total of 160 undergraduates participated in the 14-week quasi-experiment. The experimental group and the control group were both taught with a flipped approach, but the students in the experimental group were required to conduct an additional automatic speech recognition-based pre-class task. The vocd-D value and MTLD were adopted as metrics of students’ lexical diversity. A two-way between- and within-subjects repeated measures design was conducted to examine the effects of the group factor, the time factor and the group × time interaction effects. The results showed that the students in the experimental group scored statistically better than their counterparts in the control group on both the vocd-D value and MTLD. However, no significant difference was witnessed over time and there was no significant group × time interaction effect in either group.