Vol 09 No 4 TESL Reporter

              1 I

ML
teaching english as a second language
vol 9 no 4 lajk hawaii e laih
summer 1976

IS THE LANGUAGE
by

laboratory DEAD
lynn E
111enrichsen
rooms which once contained glittering machines and neat rows of student carrels would now reveal dust and dilapidation although some labs are making valiant efforts to survive many modern day prognosttiicattorrs os ca o y write off the language lab as a doomed relic of the gud io lingual past hence the question a d e d7 is the language laboratory deaad a an examination of the lab and its history will help in answering that question great things were expected of the language laboratory when it first appeared on the scene with its gleaming steel sparkling glass molded plastic and wonderful wires many teachers e aiii hoped it would be a cure alll for their language teaching problems

once upon a time the iangu age laboratory l ve da f e was a mighty oak in the virlf nt niield of au diolingualism the prognosticators predicted a y rosy future for this marvelous teaching machine manufacturers of lab equipment
flourished as language teachers scrambled to get labs installed in their schools
was a generation ago today cognitive learning psychology is in and behaviorism is out communicative competence

that

and pattern practice is often regarded with a sneer an inspection of many
is the byword

CONTENTS
Is the language laboratory dead page by lynn E henrichsen
1 I

these great expectations were later followed by an even greater feeling of disillusionment when it was discovered that the lab would not
i do everything besides not being a cure all the lab itself created some new problems of its own the machines seemed to be always breaking down and who knew how to fix them electronic repairmen cost money and that wasnt in the budget machines which break and are not fixed do not aid in the m n teaching llearrniing process they only frustrate ng e am ng frustration leads to disenchantment and eventual abandonment

pronunciation problems different and similar among cantonese and mandarin speakers page by mo shuet lee discrete structure point testing problems and alternatives page by kenneth G aitken
proverbs and prredediaaes P opr ic c ttes p in english

3

7

by yao shen

page 10 page 13

goldy locks or chocolate cake by gary R oddous

original lab tapes were designed to relieve the teacher of conducting pattern practice drills and to provide an stytirring i an jju iti in g il unfluctuating native speaker mo dea for the liearner to imitate the student could go to l karn er Z the lab and repeat patterns until they came

the

io

page 2

TESL reporter
available what the future holds is anyones predictable advances include an guess expanded role of television with video tape cassettes and even video discs being used in language teaching

out of his ears this was goodbehaviorism qa i but when the learning theory changed the ei tapes in gene ral did not the result was that even today whenever anyone thinks of the lab the repetition of pattern drills come to mind & besides becoming outdated the tap es also broke got all tangled up and occaslionally even slipped away and unrolled i down the aisle and of course there was always the bother of threading them onto the machine correctly As the jaapes and records t Jp he napes 1y grradulay wore out sound quality deteriog adua lal rated and there were no more grants to buy new materials in retrospect it is no wonder that the language lab was abandoned by so many machines were often not maintained and they became obsolete as technology advanced 0 materials also failed to keep pace with trends in teaching and to top it all off when teachers tired of their new gadgets they relegated them to lab assistants who were usually minimally trained part time student rr workers who could expect anything except dissatisfaction what would happen to any part of a language teaching program if it continued to use generation old books with torn and missing pages in classes taught only m by student assistants what is being argued here is that the language laboratory is a tool and the success or failure of any tool depends upon the way it is used used well the tool should be valuable to more than one teaching method in other words the fact that the language laboratory was developed in the heyday of audio lingualism does not necessarily mean that it is inextricably bound to that method of language teaching and that method only with a few modifications in the equipment and some imagination and effort on the part of teachers and materials producers the lab may be just as useful today as it ever was it is encouraging to note that many current textbook producers are recognizing this fact and providing new types of tapes and tape books along with their modem classroom texts concurrently several advances have been made in recent years in the area of hardware which make laboratories more reliable and manageable most notable among these are s oii l cassette style tapes and players an d solild d state electronics even wireless headphones are

another encouraging fact

is the loc reasing in

a n Amarr i farmaliiaariity with electronic sound equipment

jeain&

among the general public and consequently s i among teachers and students tape machines are no longer so intimidating and the idea of i a teacher producing his own high quality taped materials from on the street interviews radio broadcasts television programs and narrated short stories and drama for use in the lab is no longer unthinkable

space being a limitation it will not be possible in this article to discuss all the possibilities of using the language laboratory to support classroom activities however those who are contemplating investing in a laboratory or those who now have a lab and are trying mr henrichsen former ESL media specialist for the university of tulsas english l institute for international students is now with the division of instructional development department of education pago pago american samoa to decide whether or not to keep it may be interested in the following candid discussion of advantages and disadvantages of the laboratory no attempt has been made to order the items as to importance and a sales pitch approach has been avoided it should be helpful to those who are trying to decide whether or not to expend the effort to bring a dead or dying laboratory back to
1aNG1 AGE LAB U &g U

life

cfA

advantages

HIGH VOLUME CAPACITY few respectable programs would even think of assigning twenty thirty or even forty students to one class continued on page 16 note at this point it may be important to mention that despite advances in the field of audio electronics the student proof wearproof lab has not yet been invented anyone who invests in any sort of electronic media support for any educational program should realize that replacement of materials and maintenance and repair of equipment is a factor which cannot be ignored