Digital language labs are here to stay

How future ready are colleges and students for digital language
labs?

Colleges across states in the country are establishing digital language labs
to improve their students communication skills in English, thus helping them
get good jobs.

The ministry of HRD has a mandate that all state government
education departments seriously pursue the language lab initiatives to create a
pool of employable workforce. The colleges themselves are gearing up to
implement language labs by improving their IT infrastructure, and enhancing
their present computer labs to function as language labs.

The industry also supports this initiative as they directly
benefit from having a larger pool of quality students to select.

What are the benefits of digital language labs? How does it
improve the efficiency in learning for the teaching community as well as
students?

More and more universities and colleges in the country are implementing
digital language labs as a solution to improve communication skills of students.
University language departments are installing language labs to enhance the
learning and teaching of foreign languages. Language labs facilitate a broad
range of activities that involve students in reading, writing, listening, and
speaking the target language.

Similarly, teachers can launch student activities on computers,
and support them while they work individually, in pairs or in groups. They can
monitor students responses and run testing exercises. With this teachers are
able to personalize the teaching experience. These labs also help students get
into structured practice sessions, evaluations, and comparisons, thereby making
language learning more effective and meaningful.

What is the market for digital language labs in India?

There are no validated figures available for the digital language labs
market in India, but estimates put the market potential for English language
training at around Rs 2,000-Rs 3,000 crore. State governments are taking active
interest in helping universities set up English language labs. In fact, some
universities have made language lab training mandatory.

R Jai Krishna

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in