From Language Lab to Language Center and Beyond: The Past, Present, and Future of Language Center Design

From Language Lab to Language Center and Beyond: The Past, Present, and Future of Language Center DesignThe term language lab conjures up a very distinctive image: orderly rows of cubicles designed for individual students to face machines. It is a strong image, so strong that even todays centers are frequently still referred to as labs, despite the staffs insistence on the changed nomenclature. But as this volume shows, todays language centers have dramatically changed, adapted, and evolved since the first language laboratories of the early twentieth

The term Ôlanguage labÕ conjures up a very distinctive image: orderly rows of cubicles designed for individual students to face machines. It is a strong image, so strong that even todayÕs centers are frequently still referred to as labs, despite the staffÕs insistence on the changed nomenclature. But as this volume shows, todayÕs language centers have dramatically changed, adapted, and evolved since the first language laboratories of the early twentieth century and their dramatic rise during the postwar years.

This volume shows how far we have come since the early days of the language laboratory. Inspired by the 50th anniversary IALLT/FLEAT conference at Harvard University (August 11-15, 2015), this publication was conceived to create a mosaic of different directions, of different missions, of different designs that the language centers at the authorsÕ institutions have embraced.