Digital Language Lab

The primary form of linguistic communication is speech and listening is the most important receptive (and learning) skill for foreign language students. An ability to listen and interpret many shades of meaning from what is heard, is a fundamental communicative ability. Teaching listening involves training in some ‘enabling skills’ perception of sounds, stress, intonation patterns, accents, attitudes and so on, as well as ‘practice’ in various styles of listening comprehension.

The key to learning a language is the frequent exposure and use of vocabulary and grammar. The average person must be exposed to a word or phrase 100s of times before integrating it into fluent conversation. This is easily made possible through DLM by picking-up a base vocabulary of approximately 2000 words for everyday use by learning the rules of grammar; practicing vocabulary Lessons; doing grammar exercises and listening to interactive stories/situations.

The sounds of the English language can be written down using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) which is used in all Longman dictionaries. Use of minimal pair perception exercises (ship/sheep, ten /then) helps students learn the sounds of English. Pronunciation exercises can be well practices with the help of the language lab software.

Accurate perception of the sounds of the language is the first stage which leads to interpretation and comprehension. When listening to a foreign language, we need to know the sounds, rhythms, tunes and stress patterns of that language. All the pronunciation work which we do will benefit the Mentees’ listening ability.

Mentees’ speech evaluation is possible through the digital recorder modules in DLM. Mentees’ audio recordings can be saved for later evaluation. The Mentor can Record their own voice notes that Mentee can hear later as they review their work.

We listen to interpret meaning. Most of the exercises which students will do focus on listening comprehension, which is interpretingmeaning from spoken language.

This software module allows Mentees’ to experience interactive multimedia programs while simultaneously recording their own voices for practice. Using this, Mentees’ feel like they are interacting with a live native speaker and they can increase their comprehension,vocabulary and speaking skills. By adding subtitles, reading skills are also increased. Quizzes and tests can be prepared by using text, graphics, video and audio materials. These quizzes are graded automatically.

This is the all-powerful administrative control station, which has absolute control of every Mentee Console individually and collectively. Learning materials can be custom-made, added stored and assigned only from here. Fully secured with multiple user IDs and individual passwords this master workstation boasts the following unique features: Multiple Mentor logins with id and password Mentor can add their own mentee’s with class and batches Mentee’s registration has to be approved by Mentor for login Assign lessons for a future date in batches/classes/sessions/students Eavesdrop & Incognito Monitoring of Mentee console(s) Two-way Communication Broadcasting (talk/assign lessons to entire classroom) Facility for live class Mentee’s screen capturing Facility for assigning lessons group-wise & individually Mentee’s assignments can be viewed & edited Mentee’s login info & window minimized indicator Mentee’s profile can be viewed Create lessons in HTML/PDF using text creator/editor Audio/video formats (individual or combination) Real-time lesson editing & lesson re-assigning Create audio/video lessons

This is the student workstation where the DLL assignments are received, worked on and practised, under the watchful supervision of the mentor. Specifically adapted for language learning, this console boasts the following features: Login with unique id and password View and work on all previous assignments Listen, speak, read, write, and repeat Record & role play Compare/evaluate assignments Independent two-way communication with Mentor Real time translation Chat audio/texting Review assignments in all audio/video formats Text-to-speech engine