Impact of Training Through Language Laboratory on Intonation and Retention of IXth Graders of Kashmir Valley

Abstract

In today’s competitive world nobody can afford to neglect the need and importance of recent technologies and innovations happening all around. Today besides possessing good qualifications in hand still a lot of youths are facing unemployment. The reason behind if thought properly, is that majority of them are not able to present themselves in a desirable manner. And the worst thing happening because of this is that a lot of misfits are being found at different profession, who had compromised to curb their unemployment. No doubt education is termed as one of the basic requirements on which great nations are built. It is also stated as an investment that takes its time to pay dividends and can generate the highest returns when compared to any other avenues, where resources can be committed. In developing countries, where a large population lives at subsistence levels, primary education is a major tool for enriching human capital. Now the question arises, has education been able to justify its functional nature and if the educators are equipping their students and future citizens of country with this indispensable skill of self expression in proper way? In this regard, computer studies or ICT (information and communication technologies) becomes immensely important as “diverse set of technological tools and resources are used to communicate, create, disseminate, store, and manage information.”As a remedy for this problem in many countries language teachers have been using technological aids for many years, some of which have been around since the beginning of the 20th century. These include:  Radio  Television(terrestrial)  Language lab  Computer & internet  Satellite television  Mobile phone/personal digital assistant(PDA) All of these devices and media can present sound and most of them can also present video. Sound is indispensable because teaching a language without offering the learner the opportunity of hearing native speaker’s voices is unthinkable. Video offers additional opportunities for enhancing the learner’s experience, ranging from presenting a “talking head” so that the learner can see how lip movements and gestures relate to the spoken language, to films on life and culture in the target language country (Hill 1999).Also extensive trend of using Language labs by foreign educators had proved that language can best be taught to students by following basic laws of linguistics through language laboratories. As such labs were initially perceived as a solution to the problem of teaching a language to a large number of learners in a short time, and undoubtedly were a worthwhile invention but in our Indian context it somehow failed specifically in small towns. The main reasons for the lab’s failure to achieve expected outcomes, however, were:  Lack of proper training for teachers wishing to use it,  Lack of imagination in devising activities other than drills. Nowadays the language lab is no longer seen as the panacea, but rather as one of the many technological aids that the language teacher can choose to use to enhance teaching and learning. But still its awareness among common people is very less. Therefore through this paper my intention is to present the condition of language laboratories in Srinagar, the summer capital of J&K state and its impact on developing various linguistic skills like Intonation which somehow ultimately affects the achievement & retention levels of the child.