Language laboratory can be employed as a useful aid for remedial English only if existing audio=visual programs are re-placed by more stimulating language exercises requiring active students’participation. Such exercises must not require the learner to parrot model structures again and again; they must rather involve him in a language practice through problem-solving materials  that stimulates his intellect and necessities repeated references to the data in order to discover  the missing clues.

 

           

            While drill work seems to succeed with the beginner, the learner of remedial English finds it monotonous, repetitive, non-creative process, which tends to undervalue his linguistics acquisitionlevel and under estimate his mental maturity. With a little imagination, the teacher can easily prepare alternatives to drill exercises.

 

 

            In a normal classroom situation, it is difficult for a teacherto give his students adequate opportunity to converse in the foreign language and to familiarize them with its structure. Audio-lingual materials seek to re-create the English-Speaking Environment so that precepts of grammar can bere-inforced by practice in the language laboratory. In the laboratory,the students enjoy total privacy  in articulating the sounds and structures of the targetlanguage. At the same time, the teacher can monitor his progress and listen to his responses without the students being aware of it.

 

 

            Students can proceed at his ownpace and concentrate on his area of difficulty. Thus the language laboratory is a useful teachingaid that can be employed as a follow-up to classroom instruction and can help bringabout quicker and more thorough learningof the items covered.

The language laboratory can also be employed  to play recordings of poems, plays and extracts from fiction and non-fiction for students of literature.

 

By: Hermelita C. Meregildo | Master Teacher I | Limay National High School | Limay, Bataan