Students who need to brush up on their conversational Swahili or just need to get through Spanish for their B.A. requirement can check out the Foreign Language Learning Center.

The center, in 101 Watson Hall, is open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday and 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday. Night hours are Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Students with a valid ID can check out materials for Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Swahili, Thai, Indonesian, Portuguese, Russian and Burmese.

The lab also furnishes 60 headsets for listening to tapes made to correlate with coursework, a study lounge, seven video cassette recorders and television sets to watch foreign movies or news programs from around the world and a small library with a few old textbooks which students use to find different grammatical views.

A special video room is provided where teachers, mainly in the upper level courses, can bring their students to view movies. Due to past problems, students are not allowed to use the room alone.

Rosaura Young, language lab coordinator and faculty assistant, said teachers require their students to spend one hour per week in the lab as part of their grade.

Young said about 1,000 students use the center each week with Spanish being the most popular language.

Some students feel that the tapes are not beneficial to them. Kelly Newlon, a senior Portuguese 103 student, said, “The tapes don’t help me, but it is still a good idea to come here and study.”

Other students commonly sign their names and leave.