Language labs (London)

We used to have language lab sessions for Japanese at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London).

    The version they used was a Yale University recording, which was fast.

    The arrangement for our Yale University tapes was:  the tapes would play a sentence, leaving a gap for the student to repeat and to be recorded onto the tape — this bit was for the teacher/student to listen to if needed, for feedback.  It’d then play the next sentence, and so on.

    The tapes would then get wiped for the next batch of students.

    The tape I had during my session didn’t get wiped properly somehow, so I ended up hearing the previous student’s recording.

    As the Yale recording was fast, the poor chap was struggling to keep up:  before he could finish repeating Sentence 1, Sentence 2 would come on, and so on.  

    I could hear him stumbling and stumbling, and his verbal frustrations (some four-letter words) uttered at being overtaken before he could finish repeating the sentence.

    At one point, I heard him bawl at the tape, “Oh, slow down, you stupid woman!”

(London, 1978)