UCoM is an information service for people raising or working with children growing up with more than one language. It offers evidence-based information and advice on multilingual language development, addressing the questions and concerns of parents, educators and language professionals.
The service is delivered by the Linguistics team from the School of Communication with support from the Institute for Research in Social Sciences (IRISS) at Ulster University
Current research in linguistics and language acquisition shows a range of benefits from growing up with more than one language.
Inspired by the success of Bilingualism Matters in Scotland, the linguistics team at Ulster have established UCoM to provide a local service to share current research on multilingualism with families and professionals in Northern Ireland by:
- offering detailed information on several key questions on multilingual language acquisition and development;
- addressing frequently asked questions and concerns by parents and language professionals;
- organising events in the community where the benefits as well as the challenges of the process of growing up multilingual will be discussed with interested parties.