LANGUAGE LABORATORY

IN ROMANCE LANGUAGES, LABORATORY DIRECTOR

You know, I hated French in high school, but this is really great."

The director of Dartmouth's new language laboratory did not ask the student who made that remark to put it in writing, but the language instructors to whom it was addressed can vouch for its authenticity and can probably quote several other approving comments on the efforts now being made at Dartmouth to teach the oral use of foreign languages more effectively.

The principal instrument of these efforts is the language laboratory, located in what were formerly classrooms 205 and 206 Dartmouth Hall, where nearly a thousand students spend from two to four half-hour periods a week practicing their French, Spanish, German or Italian. In these rooms are 35 practice booths, each equipped with tape recorder, microphone, and earphones, and a large control booth from which instructors can monitor the work of individual students, making comments and suggestions as needed.

On each tape recorder is a tape containing conversational materials and oral drills supplementary to the work of the course to which the booth is assigned, and in the relative privacy of his booth the student can practice his French u or his Spanish rr with authentic models constantly available.

Good pronunciation, however, is not the only goal of the laboratory work, for even the simplest conversation in the major European languages requires a thorough knowledge of many variable grammatical forms, and the tapes also supply drills intended to improve students' grasp of these forms. In one common technique, the student first listens to a conversation, repeating each sentence he hears on the tape, and then proceeds to answer questions or perform grammatical drills based on the conversation.

Although his responses are spoken into a microphone and carried to his earphones, the student does not ordinarily record his own voice. But laboratory work is tested at regular intervals by having students record answers to questions transmitted to each booth from the control room. Four channels are available for communication of this sort, making it possible for four such tests to be given at one time.

The achievement of some skill in speaking and in aural comprehension has always been an important goal in language courses, but at the same time the difficulty of making significant progress toward this goal within the brief limits of the regular class period has been evident. Simple arithmetic shows that in a class of twenty; men the average time which can be allotted to each one for conversational practice is at most two and a half minutes. In an effort to solve this problem of time, all the language departments have for years maintained record libraries for students, and in recent years some use of tape recorders was also begun.

About two years ago, however, several members of the language departments began to feel that the time had come for a great expansion in the use of such equipment, and a committee was formed under the chairmanship of George Diller, Professor of French, to study the possibility of establishing a laboratory in which modern electronic equipment could be used as a regular adjunct to Dartmouth's language courses. From the very beginning, this committee received the enthusiastic support of the administration and much valuable advice from members of other college departments, particularly Blair Watson, director of Audio Visual Service, Prof. Almon B. Ives, who has had long experience with the use of recorders in the Speech Department, and James Wilson, superintendent of buildings and grounds.

After visits by the committee to laboratories already established in other schools and colleges, much investigation of equipment, and much consultation with technical experts, plans for the laboratory were drawn up last spring, and the project began shortly after the end of classes in June. The process of installation was under the 'general supervision of Leonard Ufford, assistant superintendent of buildings and grounds, who designed the booths and the floor plan of the laboratory; while the electronic installations, including the three to four miles of wire connecting each booth to the control room, were made by Matthew Durgin, an electronics expert on the staff of Buildings and Grounds. The entire project was carried out with the use of college personnel exclusively.

It must be emphasized that no linguistic miracles whatever are expected from the laboratory, and probably it can not yet be said that the laboratory teaches students to "speak Spanish" but only that it helps them learn to speak some Spanish - or French or German. Indeed, important a goal as the teaching of oral skills may be, it is by no means the only one which concerns the language departments at Dartmouth, where the relation of language to the intellectual values of the foreign culture is strongly emphasized. For us the case of a student who is able to read a sonnet of Ronsard but unable to order an aperitif may be regrettable, but that of the student who gets his aperitif without Ronsard is an abomination.

There is no doubt, in any case, that much needs to be done to improve laboratory techniques for achieving even the modest goals which have been set. The production by persons whose aptitudes tend to be verbal rather than mechanical of good copies of master tapes is still a problem, as is the matter of adjusting the tempo of native speakers' utterances to the abilities of beginning students. It is hoped that experience and the students themselves will show how these and other problems can be solved.

For the future it is planned to have the laboratory function also as a linguistic reference library, in which tapes and texts will be available for languages not taught at Dartmouth, such as Arabic, Turkish, or Hindi. Plans are also being made for the preparation of advanced conversational and literary materials for the use of students who wish to develop their skills beyond the levels attained in the basic courses. Indeed, as secondary schools are improved to meet needs already very much upon us, it is possible that more and more men will come to Dartmouth with a minimum of two or three years of good language training behind them. In that case the laboratory can help teach them, not merely to speak some Spanish, but really to "speak Spanish."

Two of the 35 practice booths, each equipped with a tape recorder, microphone and earphones, and connected with the control booth where instructors can monitor the work of students.

Professors Francois Denoeu and George Diller of the French Department shown in the control booth, directing practice by students in an elementary language course.

Lab director Paul R. Olson