UCoM has two on-going longitudinal case studies involving weekly recording of children growing up with three languages: English, which is the language of the community and nursery and the shared language between the parents; Italian, which is the language of the mother; and Scottish Gaelic, which is the language of the father.

project 'S'

This child has been recorded since 2009 when she was 2 years and 2 months. The child, now in primary school, is proficient in all of her three languages. The leader of the project is Megan Devlin who is writing her PhD thesis on the effect of the child's other two languages, Italian and Scottish Gaelic, on her acquisition of English. Project 'S' has contributed a corpus of transcribed data to the Childes databaseh

project 'L'

L is S's sibling. He has been recorded on a weekly basis in a variety of settings (English, Italian Gaelic and mixed settings) since 2012 at the age of 1year and 4 months.

Here you can see a short video of one of the sessions of English data collection

Language made fun!

UCoM and Barnardo`s NI are collaborating in an on-going innovative project to assist children of refugees and asylum seekers with their English while also respecting and supporting their multilingual identities.