Are Zoom meetings enough for Language Students?

To learn another language, the best path to proficiency is practice. The more practice, the better the learning and skill. In the best of times, classroom practice has always been heavily restricted, and in lockdown language students do not even have that. Meetings of the ‘Zoom’ variety have been much vaunted by teachers connecting with their students, but it is hard to evaluate how much language practice can be achieved by this method. The way to help students with language fluency is to provide them with daily opportunities for language practice with peers, regularly structured and encouraged through formative assessment. The only way to do that properly and professionally is to use an online language laboratory.