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

The 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 today's centers are frequently still referred to as labs, despite the staff's insistence on the changed nomenclature. But as this volume shows, today's language centers have dramatically changed, adapted, and evolved since the first language laboratories of the early twentieth century and their dramatic rise durin...