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 during the postwar years. This volume shows how far we have come since the early days of the language laboratory. Inspired by the 50th anniversary IALLT/FLEAT conference at Harvard University (August 11-15, 2015), this publication was conceived to create a mosaic of different directions, of different missions, of different designs that the language centers at the authors’ institutions have embraced.