About

Competition format

The OzCLO contest is held in two rounds.

The First Round is a two-hour competition, usually held in early March. Participants work in teams of four on a range of language-analysis problems. The teams are usually selected by their schools. The competition is held at the school with teams submitting their answers through an online quiz. Some regions offer offline alternatives.

The National Round is by invitation to the top three teams for each region. This has the same format as the First Round but is held at a local host university. The National Round is usually held in late March.

The winners of the National Round are offered the opportunity of representing Australia at the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL), which is usually held in late July or early August.

All participants complete the same tasks, with achievements recognised at the Junior level (years 7-10) and the Senior level (years 11-12).

If you have more questions about the competition, you can find the answers on our Frequently Asked Questions page.

Registration

Registration costs $40 per team. For 2023, registration is open Monday Jan 16 to Friday Feb 24. You may be able to register after the closing date, but a late fee of $20 per team will be charged. You will receive login details between the end of registration and the competition day (do not be concerned if you do not receive them right after you register). If you require additional information you should contact your regional organisers.

Training

Past papers and their solutions are available for practice.

Training sessions for participants are also sometimes held in-person at various locations. We explain how the competition is run and give an overview of the fields of linguistics, computational linguistics and language technologies. We also go over sample problems and give tips for solving them. If you would like to find out more about training sessions in each state, please email the local organisers.

Who are we

OzCLO is run on a volunteer basis by linguists and students at universities all over Australia. Here you can find a list of our names and faces.

Reviews

You can read what people have said about us here!

Social media

To receive updates about OzCLO, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.