LEARNING ISN'T always an easy thing, and University students who did not excel on the foreign language placement exam have sat through hours of the audio exercises and labs that are available in the Cabell Hall language lab. These tapes provide an auditory lesson to supplement the language rules learned in some classes, and they help students become practical and fluent foreign language speakers. Because of the labs' importance to the courses in which they are assigned, the language lab needs to adjust its hours to better suit the needs of the students who use it on a regular basis.
Audio exercises are an integral part of the foreign language courses given at the University. The audio exercises provide a more individual, yet interactive way of learning language that cannot be done in a large classroom setting. Whereas the professor teaches to the class in a broad, general manner, the audio tapes allow the student to practice his language rules away from the pressures of a classroom setting.
The audio exercises expose the student to native foreign language speakers during the listening exercises, and emphasize pronunciation through repetition. While the lessons in class strive to teach proper grammar, sentence structure and vocabulary, the audio exercises emphasize the language's practical applications, and for this reason, it is an essential component to learning. Currently, the language lab is open from 9:30 a.m. till 5 p.m. from Mondays through Thursdays, and from 9:30 a.m. till 3 p.m. on Fridays. The labs need to stay open later on these days. Even though the University is currently undergoing budget cuts, the benefits that this will provide to students will outweigh the costs that it will take to keep the room open.
For students that have late classes on all or most weekdays, it is nearly impossible to get the labs completed in a timely and thorough fashion. Although students conceivably could go to the lab before classes or between classes to complete the audio exercises, this is not a feasible task. By 9:30 a.m., most students are already in class, and although there may be an hour between two classes in which to complete the lab, it can take up a better part of this hour to travel to the lab, get a computer, get settled and then travel back to class.
This leaves the end of the day as the most practical time to complete the labs. Students have to listen to, write up and check over these labs, and this process, all of which can take up to two hours. A student who gets out of class at 4 p.m. is going to be in serious trouble. Not only will the lab be one hour away from closing, but he also has to try to get a free computer in the language lab itself. On days before and leading up to a day that a lab is due, it is common to see a line stretching out the door.
To make matters worse, there are many classes whose syllabi line up with each other. For example, SPAN 201's and SPAN 202's lab both were due Sept. 20. These are only two classes among many language courses that make use of the lab, and this amounts to hundreds of students pouring into the lab within a relatively small time frame.
Even if a student wanted to work ahead and complete the lab a week early, he would not be able to do this. Because the audio exercises mirror and are meant to supplement the lessons in class, the student will not have the knowledge to complete the entire lab until a few days before it is due. Working far in advance would leave students on their own without the guidance that a classroom professor can provide, and students should not be expected to teach themselves the material so that they can get it completed. Similarly, students cannot be expected to make multiple trips to the lab and complete it as they learn the material, because this is obviously inefficient and a waste of valuable time.
This lack of time that students have to complete the lab may lead to them rushing through it for fear of not getting it completed, or even worse, skipping through some of its exercises in order to abbreviate the lesson. Both of these options result in students' not getting the most out the work they have been given. Language is not something that can be learned in a rush. It is something that has to be learned at a slow and steady pace, and the inconvenient times at which the lab is open defeats the purpose of having it to begin with. Having the lab open at later hours would solve this problem.
Currently, the language lab is attempting to solve this problem by allowing students to take the audio lessons out of the lab by recording them on a cassette tape. However, this is also not a suitable solution. Not all of the language exercises can be copied onto tape, and audio exercises such as the Mandarin tapes have to adhere to strict copyright laws. Secondly, the environment of the language lab itself is an important part of the learning process. Because the lab has a very quiet atmosphere, it is ideal for learning a foreign language, and few other places will put up with students speaking and repeating words for hours on end.
Dorms are surrounded by noise, distractions and roommates who do not want to hear Spanish while they are trying to sleep. By keeping the lab open for a couple more hours each day, many students would benefit from the additional flexibility. The audio exercises would become a more functional part of the curriculum, and everyone there would be able to focus more on the structure of a verb rather than on the minute hand of a clock.
(Kevin James Wong's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at kwong@cavalierdaily.com.)
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