Language Lab review

                                               

What is Language lab?

A room Equipped with audio and visual equipment to aid people learning a foreign language. Language lab majorly favors the Audio – lingual method, it stressed listening and speaking more than readin and writing skills. The original language labs are now very outdated. They were using tapes based system using reel or cassette.

History of Language Lab:

Ralf Waltz is usually credited with cong the term language laboratory .The History of the American Language laboratory can be divided into five periods,

(1) The beginning period, before World War 2

(2) The Establishing period, until 1958 when the national defense education Act(NDEA), which supplied large amounts of money for education, was passed

(3) The developing period, until the end of the 1960’s

(4) The diminishing period, until the end of the 1970’s and,

(5) The revival period, until today.

Language laboratories have become practical use since around 1950. Edison’s tin foil phonograph, invented in 1877, is the origin of our deluxe language laboratories with all their complex equipment. Edison’s phonograph was used in a foreign language class for the first time at college of Milwaukee n 1891.

Rafael Diez de la Cortina thought the method of teaching a foreign language using a phonograph for the first time. (Kitao) Unquestionably the 1960s were the golden years of language laboratory. According to Hocking by 1962 there were approximately 5000 installation in secondary schools another 1000 secondary school had labs by 1964.

Advantages of Language Lab:

· It is self assisted learning; student is in the center of the learning process.

· Possible to listen to many speakers

· Not to hear other student’s bad pronunciation

· To listen to the records many times and practice

· To listen the teacher’s drills

· To prepare for the class enjoyably

· Able to test listening and speaking



· Can learn same lesson repeatedly



· Teachers gets tired but not machine



Disadvantages of Language Lab:

· Student needed to study reading most

· Student can not repeat correctly by themselves

· Repetition of same instruction leads to boredom

· It can improve only listening and speaking

· One can’t learn all LSRW skills with Language lab software

· It requires electricity; software can’t work without it

· Somewhere we feel need of teacher for proper instruction, teacher can give more explanation and examples for better understanding we can’t expect this from language lab.

Language lab Past Present and future:

As we have already discussed past of the language lab, what is the present situation of language lab? We are living in digital era. PCs have replaced the old language labs, every student have tablet or android phones they can watch learning videos or can record their inputs and upload it. In future there will be no need of big room equipped with language lab software. One can carry lab in his/her pocket.

Works Cited

BARRUTIA, RICHARD. THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF LANGUAGE LABORATORIES. n.d. 21 February 2018. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/338842 .>.

Khampusaen, Dararat. "Past, Present and Future: From Traditional Language Laboratories to Digital Language Laboratories and Multimedia ICT Suites." n.d. 21 February 2018. <http://www.ijcim.th.org/SpecialEditions/v21nSP2/02_08_14E_Dararat.pdf>.

Kitao, Kenji. The History of Language Laboratories Origin and establishment. n.d. 21 February 2018. <https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED381020>.

Roby, Warren B. TECHNOLOGY IN THE SERVICE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING: THE CASE OF THE LANGUAGE LABORATORY. n.d. 21 February 2018. <https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ebc8/687dde1b89deaf01cc53de2084de54ebc2db.pdf>.