How and why do languages evolve?

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, school clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 biology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• There are over 7,000 languages spoken across the world, but how and why did these languages evolve? To answer this question, Dr Jenny Culbertson of the University of Edinburgh in the UK is investigating our capacity to learn artificial languages – and her findings could help unlock the secrets of this uniquely human ability.

• This resource also contains an interview with Jenny about her career path. If your students (or you) have questions for Jenny, you/they can send them to her online. All you need to do is to go to the article online (see the Futurum link below), scroll down to the end and type in the question(s). Jenny will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Fabrice’s research.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

If you like these free resources – or have suggestions for improvements –, please let us know and leave us some feedback. Thank you!