Modern Language Labs are known by many names, digital language lab, multimedia language lab, language media center and multimedia learning center to name but a few. Through language lab we can learn foreign language with the help of multimedia like audio, video, images, sound etc.
History of Language Lab:language laboratory
Language lab keep on changing with th time. 1920, the first language laboratory equipped with sixteen sets of headphones linked to a single output was built at Ohio State University. 1930 is marked with the use of Radio for educational purpose in the history of language laboratory. Speech spectrograph was invented to analyze the wave forms and frequencies of the sounds that make up human speech and was used in the field of acoustic phonetics in 1940s. In 1950, telephone was used on a smaller scale to improve students' aural skills. Around the time and through 1960s audiotapes and and portable recorders were constantly used in education. It was during 1970s and 1980s that television and computers emerged as the glamorous educational media(Johnston11987). However, as a matter of fact, the concept of language laboratory came into existence with the use of analogue technology, now considered outdated.
Advantages of Language Lab:
- Students can easily integrate multimedia like audio, video, images and text. And teacher also can put materials through language lab.
- Students can learn the accent of foreigners that how to pronounce properly with a stress.
- Pupils can enhance and develop vocabulary.
- Learners can record their voice and play back.
- Students can actively participate in exercise and do more practices.
- Learners can assess themselves with unit test or we can say pupils can do self evaluation.
Disadvantages:
- It is not suitable in Indian classroom because of disinterestedness of the teacher, they are not ready to adopt technology.
- Learners can not learn real world or day to day communication through lab.
- It takes to much time to be start
- Learners can not use outside of class because electricity needed.
