LANGUAGES Calling all linguists


Student Luke Sullivan recently returned from the Linguistics


Olympiad. He explains more about the initiative


W


How does it work? The first


round of


ITH 2012 approaching, all eyes are on the Olympics. But across the UK, and internationally, a different type of Olympiad is taking place – one in which an agility with language takes


precedence over prowess on a pitch. The Linguistics Olympiad is a competition for


secondary students that involves solving linguistic data problems – including language meaning, form, structure, morphology, phonology and syntax – usually in languages far outside a student’s knowledge and understanding. The Olympiad was founded in the 1960s in Eastern


Europe, where linguistics has always been popular. It is only recently that English-speaking countries have been included. The UK Linguistics Olympiad is part of a consortium of English Language Computational Linguistics Olympiads, which developed out of the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad in 2009; two other English-speaking countries – Australia and Ireland – also take part. After one competition as Great Britain (and using


the Irish selection paper), the UK first entered the International Olympiad in Linguistics (IOL) in 2010 sending two four-person teams to Sweden.


the UK Linguistics Olympiad


(UKLO) is held at the individual schools that register. Any school can register any number of competitors, in one of two levels: foundation and advanced. This year


More than 3,000 teenagers took part in the creation of this year’s Youth Budget, which was presented to the Treasury last month. But will it make a difference? Sophie McGown explains


A 12


15-YEAR-OLD BUDDING chancellor recently presented the permanent secretary at the Treasury, Sir Nicolas Macpherson, with a new and improved budget. Priyesh Patel, from Twyford CE High School in west London,


was awarded the position of Youth Chancellor 2011 after his Budget proposals beat off competition from 249 other entries in the Chance to be Chancellor award, entitling him to present the Youth Budget to Sir Nicolas. The initiative is run by Paying For It, a joint enterprise


between the Citizenship Foundation and Aviva, which aims to educate 14 to 18-year-olds on the economic elements of citizenship, such as the role of the government in the economy and the implications of this for society. The aim of the competition is to ensure that “young


people are equipped with good financial and economic understanding” according to Aviva’s UK marketing director Gary Price. Chance to be Chancellor gives young people the


chance to create their own Budget based on a simplified version of the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, which was unveiled last year. Through an online survey of 1,363 young people,


the participants are given options of either cutting or increasing public spending in eight main areas, with the Youth Budget being a summary of these choices. They can then opt to enter the Chance to be Chancellor competition by submitting further details of their proposals.


Chancellor in waiting? Priyesh Patel,15, won the Chance to be Chancellor competition This year, 84 per cent of young people voted to


reduce public spending, implementing average cuts of around £35 billion (five per cent). That’s a 60 per cent reduction on the coalition


government’s current austerity measures, which propose savings of £81 billion. Andy Thornton, chief executive of the Citizenship


Foundation, said that young people were more concerned in spending “in the here and now, like the issues of health and education, instead of investing in problems that will cause long-term issues for the economy like the environment”. Accordingly, 69 per cent of young people chose to


prioritise spending on education, and 76 per cent on health, with participants choosing to either apply the


1,200 pupils from years 7 to 13 took part in the first round, 850 of whom took the advanced paper. Those who took the advanced level were eligible to qualify for the second round. At my school, Dulwich College in London, we


prepared for the first round in several of our general studies periods, looking at past questions and becoming familiar with what is expected. We completed the test – consisting of linguistic problems from a number of forms of communication, including one question about a form of Braille – in February, and the foundation papers were marked at the school, while advanced papers were sent to UKLO for marking. The candidates with the top 16 scores from around


the country were selected for the second round in Edinburgh. Looking at the line-up, three of the 16 had got through to Round 2 last year, but the rest of us were newcomers. The top score was 59 out of a possible 65, and those who did well in the competition but were not chosen to compete for a place on the UK team, were given certificates of achievement.


The second round


The second round was organised by the UKLO Committee and hosted by the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Edinburgh University. The event took place over a weekend in late March. When we arrived in Edinburgh on the Friday, we were


welcomed to the university by the three Round 2 tutors: Graeme Trousdale, senior lecturer in linguistics and English language at Edinburgh University; Neil Sheldon, senior master at Manchester Grammar School; and Lynn Clark, research associate at Lancaster University. We were also given an introduction to linguistics,


learning about the fields of work open to those who study linguistics at university (the most interesting of which was a fictional language creator, such as the language spoken in the film Avatar). We spent most of Saturday practising for both the


test on Sunday and for the IOL. Unlike UKLO, the IOL consists of two papers, one to be done individually and the other to be done as a team. Practice for the individual test was undertaken with Mr Sheldon, and in small groups we attempted to tackle some of the questions from last year’s Olympiad in Sweden. We then pooled our thoughts and discussed the best way to tackle these problems. We practised for the team test in a similar fashion with Ms Clark. In


The road to Pittsburgh: Students get to work during the UK Linguistics Olympiad


this session we focused on how to work as a team to tackle a problem; for example, we looked at different roles that members of the team can take on. After lunch we worked on strategies and techniques for answering questions with Mr Trousdale. The test itself was carried out on the Sunday, and


it included questions around subjects such as Warlpiri dialects and Irish numbers. My fellow competitors Piotr Galuszka, Jessica Hao, Jake Lishman and Nik Moore qualified for the UK team, which will travel to Pittsburgh in America for the international competition in July. Although I wasn’t chosen, it was a memorable and enlightening experience and I enjoyed the opportunity


Budget


smallest possible cuts of £9 billion to both of these areas, or to actually increase spending by £9 billion. In education, 11 per cent chose to stop the Education


Maintenance Allowance, reducing schools’ budgets by 12 per cent and the university budget by 75 per cent. However, 28 per cent chose to increase spending on education by £9 billion, making it the most popular policy area to invest in. Welfare was hit hard with 80 per cent of participants


cutting its budget by £10 billion (five per cent), but the largest cuts were in Housing and Environment, and Culture, Media and Sports, in which 30 per cent of young people opted to make cuts of 40 per cent. It may seem surprising that some of the teenagers’ biggest cuts were in Culture, Media and Sports, but


Youth The


to hone my linguistic skills and develop the tools required for a much better understanding of the study of linguistics.


SecEd


• Luke Sullivan, 17, is a student at Dulwich College in south London and is currently studying towards AS levels in Italian, French, Latin and English.


Further information For more on the Linguistics Olympiad, including


details of past papers, visit www.uklo.org for the UK site, or www.ioling.org for the international site. To register your school for future linguistic Olympiads, contact Neil Sheldon at n.a.sheldon@mgs.org


Priyesh said that after weighing up other areas, they felt that this area was a “more of a luxury then the essential health and education”, and recognised the need to prioritise these areas.


Robert Geddis, project manager of Paying For It,


said: “There is a distinct lack of youth voice on these matters because they can’t vote, so their views need to be heard in some way. The people who took part in the survey are the ones who will face the repercussions of the choices made now.” This is something also recognised by Mr Thornton:


“As the voters of the future, it is incumbent on the government to pay attention to the voice of young people, and the outh budget is an attempt to channel this voice so young people get their say.” Priyesh agreed that now the deficit is being reduced


it is “important to give young people a voice”. However, despite his presenting Sir Nicolas with the Youth Budget, will it have any impact? “(The government) seems to be keen in getting


involved in this initiative and engaging young people with these issues,” Mr Geddis continued. “However, we have now decided to follow up the Budget and lobby on the behalf of the young people, as they currently don’t have a voice.” But regardless of the government’s enthusiasm to


engage with the programme, citizenship’s place within the curriculum is considered to be under threat in the ongoing national curriculum review, something the Citizenship Foundation is protesting against, believing that it is an integral part of a rounded education. The charity is one of the founding members of


the Democratic Life campaign, which is hoping to convince the government to keep citizenship as a statutory subject at secondary level and to extend it into primary schools as well. As for the future of the Chance to be Chancellor


Award, Priyesh will continue as Youth Chancellor for the year while Paying For It hopes to expand the competition’s reach to more 14 to 18-year-olds, aiming to make it less of a school organised scheme and more something young people choose to be independently involved in.


SecEd Further information


For more information on the Paying for It programme visit www.payingforit.org.uk and for more on the Chance to be Chancellor competition, see www.payingforit.org.uk/chance-to-be-chancellor


SecEd • May 19 2011


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