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Diana Conway
Halibut Cove, Alaska The very diversity of students that makes teaching in a community college so enjoyable, also challenges teachers to provide a more flexible learning environment than is typical in a university setting. One «traditional» activity that can be modified for today's student is the language lab. In the typical language lab, students listen to auxiliary textbook tapes while writing in a lab manual. This lockstep approach means all students are basically working on the same material each week. Community college students have problems with this kind of language lab for several reasons. First, many are juggling work and family responsibilities as well as school and want to keep their on-campus time to a minimum. Second, graded material may catch «average» students at the right moment in their learning process, but leave behind the slower students or bore the students who come into the class with some prior knowledge of the language, either from high school study or life experiences. And finally, textbook tapes are fairly one-dimensional. They generally concentrate on linguistic structures per se rather than the larger cultural framework. They are also just plain dull for students living in an environment of MTV and high-tech movies. When Anchorage Community College began building its language lab fifteen years ago, we decided to model it on a learning resources center rather than a traditional lab. In fact, we decided to work with faculty in other disciplines to develop a joint center where one staff would catalog and check out learning material for all subjects. This relieved our department of the sole time and cost burden of running a lab. The learning center has individual cassette players, filmstrip and slide viewers, and television monitors attached to VCR's, all with multiple outlet boxes for headphones. Recently computers were added in an adjacent room. We set out to make the lab a useful and accessible adjunct to the classroom for community college students. Students told us they wanted to listen to tapes at home as much as possible, so we bought high speed duplicators and allowed students to copy tapes for personal use. At first most of the tapes were textbook-linked, but we soon heard student objections. They didn't like the extra cost of buying lab manuals, they found the workload overwhelming, and they couldn't use the tapes «on the go». What students really wanted, they told us, was tapes they could use in their cars or on their Sony Walkman while going about their business. We knew that casual listening of tapes in this manner was not as valuable as sitdown study time, but for some students this was all they were willing to give. While keeping the textbook tapes as one option, we also made our own teacher tapes that covered basic vocabulary for a class and could be used without a script. Although our classes were taught entirely in the target language, on the tapes for beginning classes we compromised and used some English. Thus, for example, students might be told to think of standing out in the snow when their toes are frozen and their cheeks stinging (this is easy to imagine living in Alaska as they do), and to repeat five times the idiomatic expression for «I'm cold» in Spanish, tengo frío. Because we felt that listening time was important, we made lab
use an integral part of the grading system. Students wishing an «A»
had to put in one and a half hours a week, for a «B» we
In our role as facilitators we constantly encouraged students to «stretch». One of the benefits of providing a wider selection of lab materials and activities than normal, was the possibility of tailor-made learning assignments. For example, the student taking beginning French all over again after two years in high school, could at least be directed to work with second or third year lab materials so that the semester was not a complete waste of time. We kept copies of all textbooks, tapes and lab manuals used over the years, even after we had moved on to other materials, and these could be used by students who needed either review or more advanced work or even by people from the community who called to ask how to brush up their language skills before travel abroad. Because we felt that language belongs to a social context, we wanted the lab to offer students historical and cultural background for their study. Thus, we began to supplement our audiotapes with videotapes from such PBS programs as Frontline and National Geographic that dealt with the countries speaking our languages. Often students would check the TV schedule and locate interesting programs before we did. These included American-made movies with plots involving our countries. Spanish-related themes are especially plentiful and include such fine movies as The Milagro Beanfield War, Missing, and Stand and Deliver. We encouraged students to videotape copies of suitable programs for sharing among themselves and counted this as lab time, too, but only for first year students. For more advanced students, we purchased videotaped copies of movies in the foreign language with and without subtitles. Students had to use the movies in the lab because they each cost around $79 and we didn't have funds for constantly replacing lost tapes. However, the subtitled versions of many of the best movies were also available at local video stores, and students could rent these for viewing alone or in groups. Spanish or Japanese cable TV was only an option for the highest level students, because of its language difficulty. However, the native speaker students in our classes were glad to have this possibility for earning lab credit, rather than being held to only using textbook tapes. Over the years, supplemental graded language materials became more available. Companies such as EMC and the BBC produced radio dramas and beginning language videos designed to replace or supplement traditional textbooks. Rather than use the materials in class, we made them available to students through the lab. Some students loved the soap-opera approaches of the programs and completed an entire series. Others, used only the opening episodes of various series, thus reinforcing the same material through different approaches. Other students ignored the programs entirely and preferred getting lab credit in other ways. Thus a wide choice of materials helped meet the interests of our diverse student body. For students who love music, we have a collection of popular song tapes, some with copies of the words available. For the computer bugs, we have purchased some computer programs, especially those stressing reading and vocabulary «adventures» such as the DC Heath programs. Also in the lab are games from foreign countries, children's books, comic books, magazines and basic readers in the foreign languages. Although we don't want reading to replace listening entirely, we are committed to giving our students choices. Money to purchase materials for the lab and to pay tutors comes from the department budget. We charge a $ 10 lab fee for all language classes. Other costs of running the learning center come from the school budget. Work-study funds are very valuable for hiring student workers in the center, and individual departments sometimes help replace worn-out equipment from their budgets. Because students like to use material at home, we want to purchase duplicate copies of some of the more popular videos, so these can be available for overnight check out. After fifteen years of building up our collection, we are at a point where some money can be used for this purpose. Tutors are the latest addition to our lab, and have meant the
difference between failure and passing for many of our students. Tutors not
only help the floundering student, but also provide unstructured conversation
sessions for intermediate
Although our lab program was designed for a community college population and has proven popular and successful there, the four aspects of our approach can work in any school that teaches language. Make access easy for students, count as lab time any legitimate contact with language outside of class, provide a variety of learning materials that appeal to many interests, and allow flexible movement among different instructional levels. When our community college was incorporated into the state university system after a bitter struggle three years ago, we found this kind of lab program to be just as valid for more traditional university students. Old and young, part-time and full-time, college-educated and high school dropout, all students seem to benefit from a flexible lab program. 
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