The language lab is open to all students when the lab is not being used by a class. Professor David Ochoa-Sol s has scheduled his Spanish for Native Speakers class to meet regularly in the lab. A large component of that class is writing and David's students do most of their writing on the computers. We are presently looking for software packages that have dictionary, spell-check and grammar check in the various foreign languages. Other classes have used the lab for writing assignments and for exploring the Internet for sources in the target language.
Many newspapers printed in foreign countries are available on the Internet.
For example, Spanish students using the Internet can read La Jornada from Mexico City, El Pafs from Madrid or Hola from Quito the day they are published. This makes more foreign language resources available to our students at a greatly reduced cost. At present the foreign language faculty is previewing additional software which will enable our students to practice listening and speaking skills in addition to reading and writing. The computers have the capacity to have students listen and repeat and then see an analysis on the screen of how closely their speech resembles what they heard. There are software packages that will enable our students to do that and we are looking at them.