The preparations for the All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad 2017 (AILO) picked up the pace in January this year with 17 problem-solving workshops held in schools and universities across the country reaching almost 480 students from across the island of Ireland. AILO is a key element of the nationwide Problem-Solving Initiative, supported by Science Foundation Ireland and run by the ADAPT Centre.
These workshops gave students a valuable opportunity to work through linguistics problems with experts from ADAPT and previous AILO competitors by practising their problem solving strategies and linguistics skills.
This year we teamed up with Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Limerick to host workshops for students in the area. Workshops were also held in Cork City, Tralee, Athlone, Athenry, Castlebar, Letterkenny, Dublin, Wicklow and Maynooth among others.
Almost 4,000 students will compete in the first round of AILO 2017 in their schools on 1st February 2017. The top 100 language decoders will qualify for the national final of AILO 2017 on 24th March at Dublin Institute of Technology.