A language laboratory is a dedicated space for foreign language learning where students access audio or audio-visual materials. They allow a teacher to listen to and manage student audio, which is delivered to individual students through headsets or in isolated 'sound booths.

Modern language labs are known by many names, digital language lab, foreign language lab, English, language lab, multimedia language lab, language media center and multimedia learning center to name but a few. These various name usually refer to the same concept.

Simply put, a language lab is a system that transforms a passive language class into an active speaking-based learning environment. This helps the language teacher to save a substantial amount of time and manage the language class more efficiently. For students this means that they can spend more time on speaking based activities and actually using the target language.

The language lab concept has been the most prominent application to use educational technology to enhance English and foreign language teaching and learning methods in our formal education sector. Technology-enhanced teaching environment tends to be more effective than a traditional text-book or lecture based class - especially when teaching languages.

The purpose of a language lab is to involve students to actively participate in language learning exercises and get more practice time than otherwise would be possible in a traditional classroom environment. The main benefit of a language lab is that it increases the time each student can spend actively speaking and practicing during the class. It has been noted that developing students' oral proficiency and speaking fluency is a common problem in our formal language education. This is the reason why most traditional language learning programs fail to make our students fluent. Language labs and similar language teaching and learning technology tools solve this problem efficiently.