By Jennifer Heldt Powell

Special to the Gazette

Italian teacher Elvira Di Fabio took her class to Italy several times over the summer without ever leaving Cambridge.

Using the World Wide Web, the students wandered through museums and looked up information such as exchange rates and postal codes on Italian Web sites.

"It lets them see the language actually being used," said Di Fabio, senior preceptor in Romance languages and literatures.

Computers are changing the way Harvard students learn languages, and they will have even more influence when the Language Laboratory moves to the sixth floor of Lamont Library this winter. It will be called the Language Resource Center.

The Center is vacating the basement of Boylston Hall, where it has been since at least 1959, to make way for several humanities departments. (Boylston is part of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' new humanities complex.)

As the lab relocates, the archaic cassette recorders installed more than 20 years ago will be replaced with a full complement of computers hooked to a main server. The current laboratory has a number of computers, but they are outdated and don't meet the demand.

The nearly $2 million renovation project, which is part of the University-wide fund drive, is designed to eliminate long lines while giving students access to state-of-the-art technology.

Every year, 1,700 to 2,000 students -- many of them undergraduates fulfilling their foreign languages requirements -- visit the lab an average of three times a week. A limited number of tapes often leaves students waiting in line, especially on Sundays, a very popular day at the lab.

"This lab will be be much easier to use," predicted Robert G. Doyle, director of Instructional Media Services. "You won't have long lines at the circulation desk. There will always be enough copies of the lessons because they will be on a server."

"Harvard is one of several schools around the country that are modernizing their language laboratories with digital equipment," Doyle continued. "Of the universities we contacted that are planning new labs, all stated that they hope to digitize their collections within the next three years."

The Value of Computers

Harvard's new Language Resource Center will allow faculty to send students surfing on the Internet, use the computer for practice and tests, and have students create their own Web pages.

"On the most basic level, the computer allows students to work at their own pace in their own way and, when using computer-based instructional materials, allows them to get immediate feedback independent of the instructor," said Judith Frommer, professor of the practice of Romance languages and director of the language program in Romance languages.

One semester, Frommer had her French students exchange electronic mail with native speakers in France. This offered the students the opportunity to come in contact with authentic, natural language, and required them to use the language in real communication situations.

In an ongoing project, Frommer's students have created a Web page that describes Harvard in French. Limited to enrolled students until now, the page will be opened to the public this fall, with the hope of receiving messages from native speakers. As with the e-mail project, answering these messages will give the students practice in using their language skills in actual communication, thus offering them reality -- not just the virtual reality associated with the computer in the past.

Computers can also help students who don't learn as well through traditional methods. For example, Lauren Black, an artist taking Di Fabio's Italian class through the Summer School, said she preferred learning with visual cues.

Using an electronic textbook that DiFabio developed for her class, Black and others checked their answers as they did the exercises. The computer told them if they were wrong and offered hints for the correct answers. Using this method, DiFabio could limit the number of tries and track the number of errors.

Other programs allow students to participate in conversations, answer questions about videos, or read literature.

There is little documented evidence of the value of computers in language learning, but anecdotal evidence suggests they help students progress, professors and students said.

"Computers really help because you find out right away if you are correct," Black said.

"This technology helps because it's active rather than passive," echoed Summer School classmate Jacob Vance, a Johns Hopkins University student. "It improves your retention." It's also fun, which makes students more likely to practice.

The Renovated Lab

Construction has begun on the new lab, which is expected to open in January. When it does, it will have 50 computers at carrels large enough to allow two or more students to study together. Some of the computers will have two screens, one for watching a video and the other for lesson questions.

Because the terminals will be linked to a server, many students will be able to open a single file simultaneously.

The server will give students access to audio and video lessons in up to 42 languages, ranging from Arabic to Swahili. Most of the languages will be available by the end of the school year; the rest should be available within the next two years.

Neutral colors will replace the dated orange of the existing lab, and -- given its above-ground location -- the views will be much nicer.

The lab will remain open at least 77 hours a week, and Lamont will open its doors 45 minutes earlier, at 8 a.m., to accommodate the laboratory. Although Lamont is losing some classrooms, alternative teaching space has been located in Grays Hall, Vanserg, and the Barker Center.

In addition to the language lessons, the new lab will have adaptive technology for students with disabilities, such as computers with enlarged text and voice recognition. It will also have two rooms big enough for an entire class, one of which will have equipment for videotaping and viewing skits.

In another area, students will be able to watch the International Channel and international news programs. Comfortable chairs and special carrels for listening to music will also be available.

Librarians hope the lab will help attract more students to Lamont.

"It's going to be a nice relationship, because the language lab brings in a lot of freshmen, and we try to be the first library Harvard students use," said Associate Librarian Jon A. Lanham. "Lamont is considered the gateway where students can learn the basics of what is available before they try the other libraries."