What is universal and what differs in language development?

Goldin-Meadow (2015) presents an exceptional synthesis of work from studies of children acquiring language under variable circumstances of input or processing abilities. Deaf children who acquire homesign without any well- formed model from which to learn language represent a powerful example. Goldin-Meadow argues that the resilient properties of language that nevertheless emerge include simple syntactic structures, hierarchical organisa- tion, markers modulating the meaning of sentences, and social-communicative functions. Among the fragile or input-dependent properties are the orders that the language follows, the parts into which words are decomposed, and the features that distinguish nominals from predicates. Separation of these two types of properties poses questions concerning the innate constraints on language acquisition (perhaps these equate to the resilient properties) and con‐ cerning the specificity of processes to language (e.g., whether properties such as hierarchical organisation are specific to language or originate in the structure of thought). The study of the resilient properties of human language in the face of adversity and the relation of these properties to the information that is encoded in the human genome represent a research strategy that draws inferences about species universals (properties that all humans share) from data about individual differences (IDs; factors that make humans different from one another). In the following, we suggest three reasons to be cautious about this approach.

Language Teaching Methodologies, Intercultural Awareness and Autonomous Learning

This paper will examine familiar reasons for including the teaching of intercultural competence within Language Teaching before adding some less familiar ones. It will focus in particular on the question of how far intercultural competence can be learned when students are formally studying languages and how far such competence needs to be acquired autono-mously. It will though also ask to what extent being initiated to the very varied facets of in-tercultural competence during formal language study plays an important role in allowing ef-fective autonomous acquisition to take place. The paper will conclude that a significant part of the intercultural development that students need to undertake if they are to be able to communicate effectively in a foreign language must happen autonomously, but that it is, nonetheless, vital that language courses at least sow the seeds of intercultural learning in ways that will facilitate autonomous learning. As such, language courses, if they are genuinely to meet student needs, should incorporate elements of intercultural training. The paper also concludes by outlining the type of empirical research that would need to be carried out for these claims to be fully substantiated.