Positive relationships and effective communication are essential to successful cross-cultural language development work or missional ministry. The purpose of this unit is to give students confidence and skills for any language learning situation they may encounter in ministry. It gives an overview of approaches to language learning and several different strategies for the initial stages of learning a language. It explores the relationship of articulatory phonetics to the production and description of many sounds of the languages of the world’s ethnolinguistic communities. It exposes students to basic linguistic analysis terms and tools. These three aspects combine to assist the learner to communicate effectively and appropriately in cross-cultural ministry situations. Topics: • Principles and goals of articulatory phonetics including the operation of the vocal apparatus and technical description of speech sounds and other features of speech • Practising speech sounds – mimicry and production, transcription and reading using International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) • Investigating the sounds of a specific language • Basic morphological and syntactic analysis including simple sentence, phrase and word structure • Typological aspects of word classes including nouns, verbs, pronouns. The notions of person including number and inclusive/exclusive, grammatical gender (noun class), case, tense, aspect, modality/mood • An introduction to other areas of linguistics which inform language learning, such as language families, sound and writing systems, semantics, pragmatics and discourse • Stages and goals of language learning relevant to planning, implementing, and managing a personal language learning program (or language school experience), including the importance of self-evaluation, self-direction, and language data collection and management • Working with a nurturer (native speaker), including the importance of personal relationships and the integration of language and culture learning • Language learning strategies including demonstration and practice of a variety of techniques for the early stages of learning a language