Question

Enumerate the principles to be followed to choose material for language laboratories?

Answer 1

The Language Laboratories are becoming items better and better valued within educational institutions since the functions and possibilities they offer are much higher than the ones in the traditional teaching-learning system
Moreover it is necessary to distinguish between language laboratory, language method and control software. A method in a procedural that guides teachers when, in turn, control software is a computer program that is used to control students' computers and to know what they are doing at all times. Instead, a language lab goes beyond, a language lab can integrate the method we want to use allowing further development of a large number of different activities in the classroom, the communication between teachers and students, using multimedia material, etc. taking into account at the same time the functions of control software.
Language immersion, attention to diversity, teamwork promotion, etc. are just some of the outstanding features of the language laboratories. According Juana Gil Fernandez (Head of the Laboratory of Phonetics. Council for Scientific Research) a language lab “allows the teacher, if desired, to transcend everyday teaching of a language to enter fully in the investigation of cognitive process of acquiring and learning foreign languages ​​in general [...]”.
Digital language laboratories are much more than a tool for training and listening discursive language, they are places to study and experiment with real samples of languages​​, learn languages ​​and exercise in their use. So they are configured using multimedia technology, communications and flexible and open organizational models with any necessary tool to process philological materials.
All this and much more is what you get with language laboratories, a complete tool to put in the service of teachers and students the latest technology for teaching.