Dear All,
For most of you, this year's Linguistics Olympiad is no doubt slipping into the
misty past, but a few things have happened (or are about to happen) that may
interest you.
- Certificates for
Advanced candidates. As you know, we send you certificates for Advanced candidates, including those who simply
participated as well as for Gold, Silver and Bronze awards. These were
ready for posting to you early last week, but Gary (who handles the
certificates) found several where the names were clearly wrong - e.g.
surname and first name reversed. In fact there were over 60 with faults,
all due to faulty data entered by teachers in the spreadsheets they sent
us. He had the certificates concerned reprinted, but that delayed the
posting and involved us in some extra cost. (We issue the certificates for
free.) The delay is frustrating for everyone, so next year we're planning
to give teachers a chance to double-check their name list before we reach
the printing stage. Gary told me that he was hoping to put them in the
post on Friday, so I hope that happened; I haven't yet had confirmation
from him, so if I hear anything to the contrary I'll tell you.
- Threshold marks for Advanced awards. I intended to tell you the threshold
marks for the awards, but I can't find any record of having done it so I
guess I didn't, and apologise. The thresholds are as follows:
- Gold: 71-106/115 (!)
- Silver: 60-70
- Bronze: 49-69
- Round 2 took place
more or less as planned (apart from a fire, snow and cancelled trains),
and a good time seems to have been had by at least most, to judge by
smiles on http://www.uklo.org/?page_id=1432
. They performed so well that we decided to send two UK
teams made up from the eight winners listed there. Lucky them - a trip all
the way to Manchester (where
we're hosting the International Linguistics Olympiad - see http://www.uklo.org/?page_id=1399).
Special thanks, as always, to the institution that hosted Round 2, to the
three tutors and to the volunteer students who will soon start training
the UK
team members. And, of course, congratulations to the team members.
- This year's test papers
and solutions are all up on our website now: http://www.uklo.org/?page_id=33#papers.
- Martin has reviewed the statistics
for this year in a report at http://www.uklo.org/?page_id=1432#stats
. The two main highlights are:
- another
growth spurt, from 1924 entries last year to 2878 this year, with most of
the growth at Foundation level - just where we'd like it to be, as a
guarantee of future numbers. We're now much larger than any other
Linguistics Olympiad in the English speaking world, though (at least) Bulgaria
is still a bit ahead of us.
- we've
broken the primary-secondary divide, with 48 entries from Years 5 and 6
(and respectable scores, too).
The preliminary registrations led us to expect even larger
numbers, so we'd love to hear from any teachers who thought they would enter,
but in the end didn't, about what held them back. And of course we'd still
welcome any Foundation and Intermediate results that you didn't get round to
sharing with us. Martin's report will give you a national average baseline to
compare your results with.
- We're hoping to announce
this year's School of the Year very soon, but meanwhile, I thought you
might like to know that we're considering another award for next year, the
UKLO Teacher of the Year. If you have any thoughts on this, and
especially if you have ideas about how we might select the teacher, do
tell me.
With best wishes,
Richard
--
Richard Hudson (dickhudson.com)