Language Labs vs. Teachers for Foreign Language Learning

                      In this blog post, I would like to talk about the use of language labs to teach Foreign Language. In my opinion, Language Labs are a great tool to be used for foreign language learning because not only are there so many different activities that one can work on from a variety of topics, levels, skills, etc. but also, some websites are self-grading like Quia. From my own personal experiences in high school, once a week our Spanish class would go to the language lab to use different websites/programs like Quia, etc. Personally I liked going to the lab a lot, along with many of the other students, however I do think that language labs only work good as a supplementary source to be combined with traditional teaching from a teacher. Many people and even articles have talked about language labs possibly being able to replace foreign language educators, and I do not think this is a good idea. Apart from the loss of jobs, websites like Quia, and different language programs are great as I said, however they are unable to connect with the student on a more personal level. How can a program or a website properly determine what specific problems the students are having, if they cannot fully interact with the student? Programs like these can give simple explanations to a wrong answer, and explain why the correct answer is correct, however if a student has a specific question about a lesson, how can they possibly go about asking the website and finding an answer? Technological resources like language labs need to be COMBINED with the teaching from educators in the classroom. These resources can be used as great practice and review to a lesson already introduced by the educator, however by just relying solely on the programs to do all the teaching, would be far less efficient than using both traditional AND technological teaching strategies together. What do you guys think?