The Language Lab disaster

Today was our first visit to the Language Lab in the Spanish II class that I am teaching, and (even before going) I was preparing myself to write a big fat blog complaint about what a disaster it was. As it turns out, however, I had my first fully successful experience, although I have to admit that for me, the Language Lab remains a touchy subject.

In general, even though it is intended to give the students real-life practice with the language, the Lab always ends up being a complete failure, and there are oodles of reasons why this happens: the audio doesn't work, the video doesn't work, the students don't work (i.e. they use the computers to visit facebook or myspace instead of actually trying to learn the language). The conjunto of all my previous experiences in the Lab have really made me think about how true it is that the use of technology must be grounded in sound theory and methodology in order to be effective in a language classroom, just like we read in the articles from this past week. But for me, a central issue surrounding the efficacy of technology--and the efficacy of any teaching method actually--is that it's clearly very difficult to translate theory into practice.


While in the Lab, I also started to reflect on how important it is that technology be in working order. Since we are dealing with tools that can most often not self-correct, we can involuntarily run into serious difficulties when those tools malfunction, because we are then left without a plan-B. For example, when the audio or video refuses to work in the Language Lab (as it SO often does), the students who are at the stations with the problems are essentially left out of the class activities and the attention of the instructor turns from guiding the class through a sequence of exercises to becoming Tech Support. So actually, even if activities are theoretically and pedagogically sound, it may be that they are completely ineffective due to complications with the technology itself.

Based on all of this, and after considering my past experiences with the Lab, it seems to me that the real issue at hand when talking about technology is not only how to use it effectively, but how to incorporate it into the classroom in a way that we aren't left empty-handed if it fails on us. We are after all, not dealing with artificial intelligence. Unlike what a few of the articles we read last week attempted to explain, I don't believe that we are trying to replace the instructor, rather that we are trying to enhance the cultural and linguistic experiences of the students, and unfortunately, if we're lacking either sound theory or sound technology, it becomes remarkably difficult to obtain that goal. And of course, if we are dealing with students who don't have the personal desire or motivation, well.....

That's another issue altogether.