ISSN: 2320-8236
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Role of Multimedia Laboratories in Language Teaching
Dr. Asha Rai
DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES,
TECHNOCRATS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY,
BHOPAL,M.P.,
ABSTRACT
With the increase in multimedia technology, its potential as a tool to enhance language skills has become an area of concern. The
present paper while describing the importance of English, aims at exploring technical and pedagogical prospects in using multimedia
and language laboratory to teach language and communication skills to technical students. Multimedia laboratories offer
opportunities to the learners to practice and perform various activities that facilitate language acquisition. The study focuses on
teaching listening, speaking, reading, writing and other sub skills using multimedia and language laboratory.
Key Words: Multimedia technology, language acquisition, communication, Fluency .
INTRODUCTION
Language is an expression of human activity. As an international language, English plays an important role in the world. English is
learned everywhere because it is a passport to enter into a world of better career, higher salary, advanced knowledge, and for
communication with the entire world. In this computer age, the use of English is growing vigorously in all the spheres. People should
master it as a means of communication. Considering the needs of mastering English, parents are keen to train their children in English
as early as possible. However, teaching English to children is really a herculean task. It needs more patience because learners of
English are generally different in terms of culture, knowledge, ability, etc. and therefore, teachers face various challenges in delivering
a communicative based curriculum. Moreover, most of the teachers are not trained in the communicative approach; they may face
linguistic barriers in delivering communicative based activities and they rely on their native language; also there may occur
differences in traditional instructional styles and students’ learning styles. Traditionally, the focus was on structure, form, and
grammar and not on meaning which is a reflective approach of communicative activities. Because of the use of an inductive approach
to teach grammar, vocabulary and phonology the students have insufficient exposure to correct language. Thus they get fewer
opportunities of error correction and being proficient. Hence, the instructors not only have to increase the learner’s communicative
proficiency, but also have to find and adopt some innovative techniques through which language is “acquired” instead of “learned”.
In an attempt to learn language consciously, the learner concentrates on the language in its written form and tries to understand the
structure and rules by applying his intellectual and logical deductive reasoning (Krashen 1982). On the contrary, while acquiring a
language the learner assimilates the matter naturally involving his intuition and subconscious processes. Here, the learner participates
actively using the language and produces real interactions. This process is just like the way a child acquires his native language and
uses it without any theoretical and grammatical knowledge.(Krashen 1982). The learners also need to learn the phonetic
characteristics of the language, its structure and vocabulary. With these skills they are able to comprehend better and have the
capability to communicate creatively and identify its cultural values.
Learning English language involves a number of difficult skills: For instance, the traditionally recognized skills like listening
comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing. Indian learners confront many problems with these skills because of the wide
differences in accent, phonological patters, sentence and morphological structures and semantic nuances, etc., between Indian
languages and English. It is required of any learner to have a good command of the language for communication purposes, with clarity
and accuracy being vital for effective and efficient communication. But many students hesitate to speak in front of the class or others
as they are not sure of the correctness of language. The process and the method of learning the language should help one to acquire
fluency as well as proficiency. In this context, Multimedia Language Lab becomes an effective tool and strategy.
Growing impact and influence of information technology on society and education has resulted in a significant growth in language
teaching and learning. Use of computers in ELT has brought about a drastic change in the educational and social roles of the teacher
and learner. Multimedia Language Lab allows students to test the result of learning without the risk of being punished for any mistake.
They do not have the fear of being embarrassed. Learning does not have to be a pressure. With the assistance of Multimedia language
learning can reduce the anxiety of students and turns out to be a positive side of learning (Gates, 1997). This helps language teachers
to have access to a variety of technological assistance in achieving their educational goals.
CONTRIBUTION OF MULTIMEDIA IN LEARNING
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Learning occurs more effectively, accurately and easily through multimedia labs as compared to textbooks. Multimedia software has
an edge over textbooks as it includes:
Active participation of learners.
Induced learning.
Recalling and applying knowledge.
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Control over the level and speed of information.
Freedom to access information according to their needs.
Can approach for support information.
Describing the contributions of Multimedia, Mayer describes that humans possess visual and auditory information processing
capabilities. Thus multimedia takes advantage of both the capabilities at once. In addition, these two channels process
information quite differently, so the combination of multiple media is useful in utilizing the capabilities of both systems.
Meaningful connections between text and graphics potentially allow for deeper understanding and better mental models than
from either alone.
TEACHING THE BASIC SKILLS OF LANGUAGE:
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.
vi.
vii.
Language has been divided into four basic skills, namely
Listening,
Speaking,
Reading and
Writing
Other sub skills include:
Pronunciation,
Vocabulary,
Grammar etc.
Listening Skill
Listening skill is an indispensable element in developing the language competence. It is not simply a receptive act, but it
includes various physiological and cognitive processes also. The fundamental principal for language laboratories lies in the
belief that individual listening practice with audiotape can help build a learner's overall ability in the target language through
self-instructed comprehension practice. The student listens to oral speeches in English, then separates them into segments,
groups them into words, phrases and sentences to understand the meaning. In the Multimedia laboratory, students listen during
various activities for two purposes: to repeat and to understand. They repeat to memorize linguistic items such as words, idioms
and sentence patterns. This is an important task in initial listening exercises. Jack Richards (1985) describes listening
competency as being comprised of a set of "micro skills". These are the skills effective listeners employ when trying to make
sense of aural input. Multimedia technology immensely contributes in the development of these skills. Through multimedia
technology, users can start, stop, and review chunks of language according to their understanding and remember the aural text.
When they need to refer back to previously viewed material, the learner can click the mouse to review that old information and
link it to the new. Also when learners can see the faces of the person speaking in the video, they can take the benefit of visible
facial movements to understand the sound-meaning correspondence in the target language. Stress, rhythm, and intonation are
automatically highlighted when aural language is chunked into syntactic units. As such, when the aural text is chunked for the
language learner -- when the presentation is paused at these junctures -- the learner begins to acquire a feel for patterns of
sounds both rhythmic and syntactic. No doubt, the combined effects of aural, visual, and textual information on the computer
screen makes up an ideal laboratory for student problem-solving at the level of individual words and sentence structures. The
learner has at her disposal rich visual and contextual clues that can assist in breaking the code of the written and aural text.
They can easily infer meanings and make predictions from what they see and hear on the screen. Multimedia Laboratories
guide these viewing/comprehension strategies.
Speaking Skill:
Language laboratory is a good platform to train technical students to improve their speaking skills. As they practice the
speaking skills in the laboratory, the content of the language, confidence and clarity of thinking are improved. Some Basic
strategies that can be used to improve speaking skills in the laboratory sessions are asking and answering questions, imitation
and repetition, substitution, dialogues, day-to-day expressions, eliciting, guess and speak, directed dialogues, descriptions, roleplays etc. They can also practice voice based activities like speech drill exercises through model imitation, voice recording,
voice graph and variable speed playback to neutralize accent and acquire fluency. Teachers can also conduct Group Discussions
and role plays. Live recording of discussion content for each group can provide feedback on their performance.
Pronunciation
Students learning pronunciation need to incorporate the articulation of segmental sounds i.e. consonants, vowels and
diphthongs used in English language. The instructor need to focus on “the sound clearly in isolation and in one or two words;
so that students can grasp it in a better way and is able to repeat the sound, in chorus and individually.” Stress is a crucial aspect
in English language and the span of time between stressed syllables is always nearly same. Multimedia laboratories provide
ample opportunities to the students to get exposure to listen and speak English with a natural rhythm and experience the stresstiming feature.
Pronunciation can be improved by utilizing the techniques of imitation, explanation, practice, comparison and contrast. Sounds
of the language, accent and intonation are taught by drilling the words, phrases and sentences. This helps the students to
Role of Multimedia Laboratories in Language Teaching
Dr. Asha Rai
© INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COMMUNION
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ISSN: 2320-8236
VOLUME: 2, ISSUE:3
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develop sensitivity on their own correspondence between pronunciation and spelling. Sounds, pronunciation and meanings of
the words in different contexts can also be given due practice in Multimedia Laboratories .
Reading Skill:
Reading doesn’t mean only reading but it includes unraveling of the meaning represented by the words, phrases and sentences.
Fluency and comprehension (vocabulary, text comprehension) are the key elements of effective reading. Besides these it also
includes summarizing, drawing inferences, framing questions and determining the importance. In Multimedia labs, by
screening a large number of passages for only a few moments each students can get ample practice of skimming, scanning and
reading comprehensions. Thus it overcomes the problem of limited number of passages in the textbooks. Multimedia reading
materials and environments have an edge over textbooks as they offer a variety of flexible supports including text-to-speech,
voice recognition, animation, music and sound effects, embedded dictionaries, linked videos to boost background knowledge
and vocabulary, study tools such as highlighters and annotation capabilities, and animated agent tutors. They have the freedom
of choice of content and tools, adjustable challenge level, and adjustable practice and feedback.
Vocabulary:
Vocabulary is the basic component of language learning. It empowers learners to comprehend the meaning of the text they
read. If the students find many words of which they do not know the meaning, their comprehension is compromised and soon
they lose interest and give up reading. Teaching vocabulary is very difficult as the words have different meanings in different
contexts. So the teacher needs several techniques to develop the learners’ motivation. Solving puzzle is one such technique. It
is a self- motivating material and has a strong appeal. It provides the students to learn and practice the sentence pattern and
vocabulary. Students participate actively and pool their knowledge in order to solve a puzzle or mystery. Multimedia games
like Hang mouse, crosswords, unscramble, word search etc. can help the teacher to teach vocabulary easily and can help the
children to memorize and understand them more efficiently.
Writing Skills:
Writing is the recognition of something thus it should be done very consciously. A different kind of mental process is involved
in writing. Writers need more time to think, reflect, prepare, find alternative and better solutions. The teaching of writing has
its own aims and techniques. Also the classes on improving writing skill have the potential to help, consolidate and improve
learners’ speaking and reading skills. Multimedia software help the students and involve them in activities such as Helping the
students learn the process of writing involved activities such as composing, revising and editing stories and other compositions.
Through Multimedia software the learners can experience the subtle emotions and abstract concepts with which the story is
packed. The deeper the learners’ experience of these emotions, they express their emotions in a more refined way. With the
combination of experience and expression they produce masterpieces. With the help of Multimedia students access information
about the general structures and purposes of such written activities as report writing, e-mail, participating in small group
meetings, handling interpersonal communication effectively, and making formal group presentations etc. Thus learners can
integrate writing with reading as one reinforces the other. They can gain experience by reading books and other printed matter
and try to use patterns they have seen in print.
Grammar:
Grammatical knowledge is also an element of communicative competence and for a language user to communicate effectively,
all skills are necessary, since they are inter-related and build upon each other. Moreover, teaching children English grammar
can be an appalling task because there are so many connotations of the language for children to learn and learning all of these
rules and connotations is very boring and tedious task. The best way to teach grammar is to expose your students to the proper
use of English grammar. Multimedia laboratory offers students the ideal exposure checked by experts and provides ample
number of quizzes, exercises and other activities related to different topics of grammar. Thus students learn grammar with more
efficiency and strengthen their confidence and fluency.
CONCLUSION
Technology continues to be perceived as an enhancement to the process of language acquisition. Language Lab and Multimedia
are integrated into the training of communication skills to technical students since 1990s. Fast and powerful computational
capacity along with the orchestrated video, text and graphics of today's multimedia learning systems is no doubt a sign of more
sophisticated paradigms for interaction and, consequently, more effective learning. The present study has shown that
Multimedia is an essential need of the present era, and is quite successful in improving the language and communication skills.
Undoubtedly it has an indispensable role and is highly accepted by the learners
REFERENCES:
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2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Krashen, S. (1982) Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Pergamon Press.
Gates, B. (1997) The Road Ahead, revised edn, New York, Penguin.
Mayer, R. E. (2001). Multimedia learning. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Richards, J.(1985), The Context of Language Teaching, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Warschauer, M.and Healey, D. “Computers and language learning: An over view.” Language Teaching 3.1, 1998.
Levy, M. Computer-Assisted Language Learning: Context and Conceptualization. Oxford: Clarendon. 1997.
Savignon, S. (1991) Communicative language teaching: State of the art. TESOL Quarterly,
Role of Multimedia Laboratories in Language Teaching
Dr. Asha Rai
© INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COMMUNION
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