The North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition (NACLO) is a fun and educational contest for high school students in which you solve linguistics problems from a variety of languages (natural and artificial).
No prior knowledge of linguistics or any particular language is required. All you need to bring is your curiosity and enthusiasm!
Top-scoring students in the first round are invited to participate in the second round. This leads to the selection of a Canadian national team, which competes with teams from other countries from all over the world in the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL), hosted by a different country each year.
A large number of practice problems (and their solutions) are posted on the NACLO website.
Announcement about NACLO 2024
UBC is pleased to be hosting the 2024 competition in person! The open round will be held on Thursday,
January 25, 2024 from 9:00am-12:00pm. Students should plan to arrive at 8:30am. The contest will be held on campus at UBC Vancouver, in DMP 101 (that’s room 101 in the Hugh Dempster building; click the link for address and map). Please note that there will be no on-site registration; you must register in advance. You can find information about the contest, as well as a registration form, at https://naclo.org/
We will also be hosting two pre-contest practice sessions in the first few weeks of January. Information about practice sessions will be emailed to registered students and/or posted here, as it becomes available. Practice sessions are tentatively scheduled for the following days:
- In person on UBC campus, 4:30-6:00pm on Thursday January 11. The format of this session will likely be as a structured review of a specific set of practice problems, which will be sent out to registrants prior to the session.
- On zoom, 4:30-6:00pm on Wednesday January 17. The format of this session will likely be an “office hour” where students can bring questions about specific practice problems they have been working on.
The invitational round (based on scores from the open round) of the competition will be on Thursday, March 14, 2024 (Pi Day!), from 9:00am-1:00pm, also on campus at UBC Vancouver.
UBC NACLO can be contacted at naclo.ubc@ubc.ca.