Olympiad Vault track

Linguistics

Organised by: UK Linguistics Olympiad (UKLO) — www.uklo.org

Tutor led

This track is authored and taught by a vetted specialist tutor (enhanced DBS checked, sample lessons and marking vetted before they teach), recruited and quality controlled by the founder. The founder does not claim expertise in this subject, and this page does not pretend otherwise.

Competitions covered

UKLO Round 1 at Breakthrough, Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced levels; Round 2; the International Linguistics Olympiad pathway.

Who can enter

Open to school pupils across Key Stages 2 to 5; we target secondary students, roughly Years 7 to 13. No knowledge of any particular language is needed.

Usual timing

Advanced Round 1 entries usually close in early November and the paper is usually sat in November; Round 2 usually follows in February or March.

Confirm the dates. Confirm on the UKLO site. Competitions are entered through schools by a teacher. We prepare students; we do not enter them.

Levels in this track

Three levels, one route map

Level 1

Foundation

Breakthrough and Foundation puzzles: spotting patterns in unfamiliar languages, sounds, scripts and word structure.

Level 2

Challenge

Intermediate standard: grammar systems, number systems, writing systems and translation puzzles under time limits.

Level 3

Olympiad

Advanced standard: a 2.5-hour paper of hard language-data problems, then Round 2 training with the track tutor.

Topics covered

Phonetics and sound patternsmorphologysyntax and word ordernumber systemsscripts and deciphermentsemantics

Try sample problems See founding pricing