Experiencing the diversity of modern society

“The MA Multilingualism enables me to work in a broader field and with an international perspective. As a speech therapist, I chose the MA Multilingualism to specialize in multilingual language acquisition and language processing”. Last year’s master student Sophie Gruhn shares her experiences with the MA programme.

During my studies, I became aware of many other fields to which multilingualism is related, such as the protection of minority languages, migration, and language use in business, in media, as well as in education.

Leeuwarden is a perfect place to study multilingualism, because you study in a bilingual area (Frisian-Dutch), which gives optimal possibilities for field work. Since my fellow students came from different countries all over the world, spoke many different languages, and were part of different cultures, I could directly experience the diversity of a modern society and its advantages to open the own mind towards new perspectives and ideas.

The Master offers a compact package of all relevant topics related to multilingualism within a short period of time and still gives the chance to specialize in the second term. Within the first study term, I developed an interest in developing language tests and therapy material for multilingual patients with language disorders, or to design language learning material for multilingual language learners.

With help of the contact of my lecturers in the program to international academics, I got the chance of an internship with the Inter-institutional Centre for Language Development and Assessment (ICELDA) in Bloemfontein, South Africa. Thus in the second term, I developed with ICELDA a Test of Emergent Literacy (TEL) for English speaking pre-school children in South Africa and wrote my thesis on the initial validation of this test.

Also take a look at this interview with Sophie on the UCF website!