Language Lab
INTRODUCTION
Language can be defined as the method of human communication, either oral or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way. Language Lab is a place where students get a chance to become aware towards the different aspects of any aimed language, and that brings great interest in the students’ mind to learn and get proper command over the aimed Language. Different activities and Language learning tools create a favorable atmosphere for the students where their language learning efforts can become more effective.
OBJECTIVES
- To enable the students to acquire the knowledge of the elements of language in order to comprehend oral and written form of language.
- To enable the students to enhance the skill of receiving, interpreting the sounds.
- To acquire the skill of reproducing the sounds in English with correct pronunciation. To enrich the vocabulary.
- To acquire the skills of effective communication.
- To be able to communicate formally and informally in English through practice.
- To train ears, mouth organs and eyes through extensive listening, oral, reading and writing practices.
ADVANTAGES OF LANGUAGE LAB FOR STUDENTS
Acoustics: The language lab provides all students, no matter where they are seated in the room, equal opportunity to hear the instructor and to be heard by the instructor. Each student can listen to the lesson material at a level set by the Teacher. Students can receive only the lesson assigned by the teacher. None of the lesson material is misheard due to the direct nature of the sound transmission heard by each student via his/her individual headset.
Privacy: The headset/microphone provides students with a psychological privacy that promotes their speaking ability. It reduces the inhibitions felt in normal classroom situations and encourages the shy student to speak. The instructor can talk to a single or group of students in privacy without disturbing the rest of the class.
Overcoming shyness: The language lab encourages students to talk freely and lose their inhibitions when talking in front of their peers. Lab tends to make students more anonymous.
Attention: as the language lab allows the student to listen to the program stimulus individually, each individual student’s attention is focused on the program material being studied, ultimately increasing the attention span of the student and teaching the student to listen and analyze the content of the lesson.
Developing listening skills: Listening skills are an essential element in becoming linguistically fluent. The language lab helps students develop good listening skills and aids the process of communication. Students hear the correct language patterns all the time through their headsets instead of mimicking other students who may be pronouncing incorrectly.
Self-pacing: The students may work through the lesson material at a pace suited to their ability. The lab becomes a personal tutor to them.
Efficiency: The teacher can monitor individual students (and talk to them) much more efficiently than in a regular classroom. Usually in a regular classroom all other students stop speaking when the teacher communicates with an individual student. In a lab they will continue working without interruption. Also, a teacher can interact with many more students since s/he merely presses a mouse key in order to be in contact with a student. The language lab makes the most efficient use of time, improving the teacher/student time ratio and allowing the instructor to maximize the use of time in a given lesson. In a single teaching session, individual students can have more opportunity to speak than during an entire semester in an average class of 30 students.
Record/comparing: the students have the ability to record their own voices along with the master stimulus. Each student can be working interactively on different segments within the same program or be working with completely different program material.
Teacher monitoring: Teachers can monitor the students very effectively in the language lab and can keep constant watch on the student’s learning progress. Which can help both student as well as teacher to reach at the targeted aims of the teaching learning methods.