Revisiting the Language Lab in the Age of Online Learning: Videoconferencing, Teacher Feedback, and Lerner Self-Correction

Given recent technological developments and the surge in online teaching, this essay explores how learning strategies associated with the post-war technology of the language lab can inform contemporary teaching. Following a behaviourist approach, the foreign language lab was considered state-of-the-art for schools and universities for most of the second half of the twentieth century. The concept was as compelling as it was faulty, assuming that best results for language learners could be achieved through memorising pre-set sentence and dialogue structures. While the practice of oral pattern drills has been widely criticised and has long been considered out of date by theorists and practitioners alike, the focus on learners' oral production, on feedback and self-correction offers some valuable lessons for today's technology-enhanced language classroom.