Educational screen & audio-visual guide (c1956-1971])

USING THE LANGUAGE Main recording studio where tape masters and tape copies are made. Fernand Marty, director of Middlebury College language laboratory, prepares master tape. MOST language teachers regard the language laboratory as a place where (a) dictations can be given, (b) remedial pronunciation work can be done, (c) cultural audio-visual materials can be used. For the dictations, the students listen together to a tape where pauses have been provided, and they submit their papers to the instructor. The remedial pronunciation work is usually done using one of these installations: (1) the student has two machines; he listens to the tape to be imitated on one machine and he records his imitation on the other machine; then, he compares his recording with the original; (2) the student uses a dual-channel machine; the text to be imitated is on one half of the tape with pauses; the student records his imitation on the other half of the tape during the pauses; then, he compares; (3) the text to be imitated comes to the student from a console and is recorded on the student's tape as he listens to it; during the pauses, the student records his imitation, thus preparing a tape which contains a copy of what he had to say and what he said; then, he compares. Cultural audio-visual materials are plentiful (films, slides, filmstrips, records about the literature, the arts, the history, the geography, the customs of foreign countries). These aids can be used for group study — when a film or slides are shown to a whole class — or for individual study — when the student comes to the language laboratory for the individual study of a recorded play or when he comes to an audiovisual room to look at slides and listen to the accompanying tape commentary. In addition, a Realia room can be installed with newspapers, magazines, flags, coins, maps, pictures, stamps, costumes, etc. These uses of the language laboratory are profitable, but they do not exploit its full capabilities. The main purpose of a language laboratory should be to teach the audio language skills: audio comprehension and oral self-expression. However, this use of the language laboratory requires a complete modification of classroom techniques and a new presentation of the language. This is due to the fact that the grammar of the spoken language is quite different from the rules of the written language. Let us suppose, for example, that you are teaching English to a group of foreign students and you tell them: "In English, the past participle of most regular \erbs is formed by adding the suffix -ed to the infinitive (to dress/dressed): sometimes, the consonant is doubled (to stop/stopped)." This rule — although quite true on paper — does not apply to spoken English where the ])ast participle is formed by the addition of a "t" sound (to stop/stopped, to dance/danced), the addition of a "d" sound (to burn/burned, to cry/ cried, to arrive/arrived), or the addition of a syllable (to repeat/repeated, to visit/visited). The classwork and the laboratory drills should, therefore, be based not on what happens on the paper, but on what happens when the language is spoken. This audio-graphic duality affects nearly all languages, and it is particularly marked in language like French where practically all the rules of spoken grammar are different from the Sipelling rules. See "Methods and Equipment for the Language Laboratory," pages 28-42; Audio-Visual Publications, 1956, Middlebury, Vermont. Thus, your first step in using the language laboratory for the teaching of the audio language skills should be to modify your class presentation and to use a text which clearly separates the spoken and the written aspects of the language. The second step takes place in the laboratory where the student reviews and practices the work done in class. For this laboratory work, the group study method is not efficient and the "Library" system has to be used (that is, the student goes to the laboratory when he wants to and he studies as long as he needs). He goes to a booth or room where he finds a practice tape. This tape conuins problem sequences immediately followed by the answers and the student proceeds as follows: (1) the tape says: "Drill number one; you are going to hear 30 sentences in the masculine; shift them to the feminine; (2) the student listens to the first problem sentence: "Tous mes amis sont partis"; he stops the tape (the machine should have a pause button for instantaneous stop and start); he thinks about the answer, says it aloud, and then starts the tape again to hear the answer "Toutes mes amies sont parties" and to ascertain whether his 176 EdScreen & AV Guide — April, 1958