The infrastructure of Language Learning Centres

Where Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory and Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (TELL(1)) practice are concerned, it is tempting to see a direct cause-effect relationship between the problematical situation that existed in the late 1980s and substantial changes that took place in the 1990s. There is no doubt that the "Infrastructure of Language Learning" did take a turn for the better in several key universities in the 1990s, and that the changes did have the effect of bringing learning theory and classroom practice closer together. But the role of TELL is still not at all clear in this new environment, in the sense that the new technologies, with their greatly increased capacity to improve communication, have not yet been exploited in any systematic, theoretically well-founded way. Without that link, technology remains an adjunct activity, as can be seen by the varying degrees of infrastructural separation between the New Language Centres and the language 'labs'.