Why create a center for the learning of language and culture?

The traditional model of a “language lab” embodies a number of assumptions about language learning that are both outdated and misleading. The term suggests that language is something that can be collected, dissected, and isolated in the sterile conditions of a “lab”. Moreover, the “language lab” designation makes no mention of either “culture” or the fundamental reason for the lab’s existence—learning. The antiquated notion of Technology reduced to Laboratory was fine for Dr. Frankenstein, but the role of technology in the lives of students is obviously much greater.

Recent research into language in discursive, sociolinguistic and sociocultural context has questioned the validity of the traditional view of language as an autonomous entity that can be isolated from the diversity of actual situations in which language is used. In terms of language learning and teaching, the autonomous model of language has been consistent with traditional models of pedagogy that have focused on isolated forms and structures which constitute a body of knowledge to be analyzed, taught and learned. In the past several decades, research and practice in language teaching has attempted to move beyond the traditional model towards one where language is ideally taught and learned in meaningful contexts of communication and interaction. The traditional model of language and its teaching has been largely “culture-free”, or more precisely, has not acknowledged that language is an inherently context-sensitive sociocultural activity that cannot be separated from the real-world context of human attitudes and behaviors. Culture has often been seen as an extra or optional component in language teaching and learning that is marginalized from the central task of “language” teaching. In response to this misrepresentation or non-representation of culture, some researchers and practitioners have advocated “culture as the core” of language teaching and learning. This view recognizes that language does not stop at the end of a sentence—or a lesson—rather, language is produced, reproduced, shaped, and reshaped by speakers in a variety of ways and contexts all of which are deeply cultural. To rename the “Language Lab” the Language and Culture Learning Center is an effort to recognize that language is not separate from the real world in which speakers use language culturally for a vast array of purposes, for example, to communicate, to obfuscate, to create identities, to identify others, to socialize and to be alone. From this perspective, language learning does not end when class is over for the day or for the semester, language is part of culture, that which gives a sense of meaning our lives.