Results for 2010

International Linguistics Olympiad, Stockholm

Our two teams won one bronze, one best question answer and two highly commended awards. Congratulations! For more details and pictures, click here.

Round 2

The eleven winners of Round 1 met in Sheffield, as guests of the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Sheffield University, with three committee-members as tutors (Graeme Trousdale, Neil Sheldon and Vivienne Rogers). They took part in a day of tutorials as well as a three-hour written test, and on the basis of a combination of the tutors’ assessments and their performance in the test the UK’s participants in the International Linguistics Olympiad were chosen. The standard was so high that we would have been proud to send every one of the competitors, but we had to choose. However, we found that we could afford to send two teams (of four), rather than the one team we had originally planned, so we selected eight candidates:

Craig Bohrson, Manchester Grammar School
Alison Coxon, Withington Girls School
Helen Hambling, Stephen Perse Sixth Form College
Imogen Nelson, City of London School for Girls
Sarah O’Keeffe, City of London School for Girls
Younus Porteous, Westminster School
Carl Rietschel, Westminster School
Nathan Somers, Manchester Grammar School

Congratulations to all of them. We look forward to following their progress in the International event in Sweden.

Round 1

Here are some global figures summarising the results of the tests at Round 1.

Foundation level

Each school’s foundation-level scripts were marked by that school, but we invited schools to tell us their results and to send us their scripts for moderation. Consequently we only know the results of those schools who reported their results to us. Moreover, we didn’t provide a standard format for this reporting so we can’t give a systematic analysis of results by age (or by anything else). However, the results were extremely encouraging.

About 197 pupils took part. 79 competed as individuals, but the rest worked in teams of between 2 and 5. The statistics don’t show any clear tendency for teams to score higher than individuals.
The scores ranged between 22 and 58. Bearing in mind that the maximum possible was 65, these scores are impressive. Maybe very low scores didn’t reach us, so we can’t draw too many conclusions from the surprisingly high minimum of 22 (compare the Advanced minimum of 3).
As at the Advanced level, age affects performance, but at this level we only know the age or NC year of just over half the competitors. With this caveat, the figure below shows that higher scores are linked to higher age.

The distribution of marks in the figure below shows a very sharp peak around 40. Given the effect of age on marks, anyone who scored 40 or more at Foundation level this year will be ready for Advanced level next year.

Special congratulations go to the youngest competitors reported to us: the Year 7 11- or 12-year olds from Fitzharrys and Imberhorne School who scored very respectable marks in the upper 30s.

Advanced level

406 candidates from 36 schools took part.
The oldest candidate was 19, and the youngest candidates were 13 (Year 9).
The mean mark was 36.8 (out of 100), and marks ranged from 3 to 92.
As can be seen in the following graph, scores tended to cluster round the mean, with a long thin tail of higher scores.

As expected, older candidates tended to score higher than younger ones. The next figure shows this tendency. The strong performance of younger pupils bodes well for future competitions.

The twelve candidates who have been invited to take part in round 2 are the following (in alphabetical order):

Richard Bartoldus, American School in London
Craig Bohrson, Manchester Grammar School
Alison Coxon, Withington Girls School
Bill Foster, Watford Grammar School for Boys
Helen Hambling, Stephen Perse Sixth Form College
(Sara Koyanagi, Stephen Perse Sixth Form College – unable to take part)
Imogen Nelson, City of London School for Girls
Sarah O’Keeffe, City of London School for Girls
Younus Porteous, Westminster School
Carl Rietschel, Westminster School
Imogen Sadler, Kingswood School, Bath
Nathan Somers, Manchester Grammar School

Congratulations to these students on their performance. But as you can see from the diagrams, there were a lot of other performances, often by younger candidates, which were almost as good; so we look forward to an even stronger field next year.