Ideal language lab facility proposal

My idea for a language lab facility is quite different from that of traditional language labs I remember from elementary school. Rather than having students listen to dialogs on audio cassette tapes, which are, of course, very outdated, I would rather use this facility to give students the opportunity not only to listen to and interpret speech from native speakers, but also to interact on a level other than face-to-face dialogue because feel that the classroom is the ideal place for face-to-face interaction, but this language lab should be there to supplement that with other types of authentic communication. I propose a language lab facility that would include a form of synchronous or asynchronous communication with native speakers (if possible) or other L2 learners, an interactive language learning software, and time to allow them to browse the Web in search of information about the target culture. 

First, authentic synchronous communication. I would like to set up an online pen pal exchange, something like mylanguageexchange.com. Students would spend time in the language lab writing to their pen pals in the L2 and responding to what they receive from them. Using native speakers would be ideal, but if that is not an option for some reason, I would like to set up an e-mail exchange with another foreign language class either at my school or at another school in the country. I think students would enjoy writing back and forth to a student in another city or state (or country!). This would be personal writing time, and the teacher wouldn't necessarily have to make corrections to this. The idea would be to let the students freely write back and forth and only participation would be graded.

As far as language learning software goes, I'm not a big fan of Rosetta Stone. Fortunately, my job at a public library in Pasco County has exposed me to a number of language learning software titles that we offer to our library patrons. I have had a chance to personally work with Rosetta Stone and another piece of software called Mango Languages, the latter supporting an "educator edition." Mango is excellent because it's interactive like Rosetta Stone, but in between the lessons or "slides," there are little cultural notes and grammar notes that I think students greatly benefit from. I would not require Mango specifically in my language lab, but I'm mentioning it because I'm very familiar with it. Any other comparable language learning software would suffice as long as it is interactive and does not require that students merely listen and repeat because this is not in line with my goals for this facility. As I stated above, I want students to do more than regurgitate information that is fed to them.


Finally, time for Web browsing. I think this is a vital part of the language lab. Students today are so accustomed to going online and instantly finding all of the information they need. I want students to feel comfortable with the L2, so I would like to give them an opportunity to do something they're used to while using the language lab. I would give a different assignment for every time students go to the language lab, but in general, I would ask them to spend a certain amount of time browsing the Web (only in the L2) in search of something that strikes them as interesting or fun. This could be a game, a news article, a book or movie review, anything (appropriate) that they can find in the L2 would suffice. I choose this element for my language lab because it will expose students to real, authentic, and natural language in the written form as it appears all over the Web. A lot of students might think that there isn't a lot of information available online in the L2 or that everything that is available is of no interest, but with some guidance from the teacher I think students will be surprised that they can find a lot of material online in whatever their L2 happens to be. The goal is just to get them motivated and to allow them to be creative in looking for what interests them. The teacher, of course, would circulate to make sure that students are on-track and to give support where needed. Also, for this element, students would be asked to blog about what they found and to share their posts with their classmates.


My language lab would exist to give students support in areas that can be hard to cover in the classroom when the focus on speaking. I have heard from so many students in classrooms I have observed that they just don't speak enough in class, so I would like to put a lot of emphasis on, among other things, face-to-face interaction (both in pairs and in groups) in my classroom, while the language lab would serve as scaffolding for writing, reading and listening skills and would complement what we do in class.