Language Laboratory, Trent Building

The first language laboratory was opened in the Trent Building in 1963, which enhanced students' listening and comprehension skills in spoken Russian.

Here, Gerald Smith (later Professor of Russian at Oxford) conducts a Russian class in the newly opened language laboratory in the late 1960s. Cynthia Ball (later Professor Cynthia Marsh) sits at the desk on the far right.

Use of language laboratories continued to develop and culminated with the opening of the Language Centre, a dedicated teaching unit providing tuition in thirteen languages, in 1991.