Linguistics Department Welcomes High School Students for The North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad’s Open Round (NACLO)
On January 23rd, the Linguistics Department hosted 20 high school students from Utah and Idaho as they competed in the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO).
Linguistics is a fascinating major as it sits at the intersection of the humanities, the social sciences, and more traditional STEM fields (math, computer science). NACLO gives middle school and high school students interested in these topics a chance to engage with the linguistics department and helps them discover linguistics early on. It is important for universities to connect with students and educators in local communities, and NACLO is the perfect chance to start building those bridges.
NACLO first held competitions in 2007 to generally promote Computational Linguistics and Linguistics to students in North America. During the competition, students are given language data and puzzles and use logic and reasoning to solve these challenges. Students interested in computer science, mathematics, languages, logic games, and/or word puzzles will likely enjoy this competition. In 2024, the three-hour open round competition had over 1,900 participants in North America, and then the top 10% were invited to participate in the more challenging four-hour invitational round. Top participants in the invitational round can be invited to a final round and even have a chance to participate in the International Linguistics Olympiad as a representative of the USA.
The University of Utah is one of the host sites in North America, and students who participated in the 2025 open round of competition this January had the chance to interact with faculty, undergraduate, and graduate students in Linguistics. NACLO organizers will grade participants' exams, and then contestants will be notified if they will move on to the invitational round of competition, to be hosted at the University of Utah in March. Students who are selected for the final round meet students from across the nation and international students, too.
“Computational Linguistics is a very hot field of study right now, and this competition can be a great way to expose students interested in this area to the kind of problems (computational) linguists think about.”
- Dr. Aniello De Santo, a faculty member and one of three computational linguists at the University of Utah
He also described how students use analytical skills about language and pair that with fundamentals of computer science and algorithmic thinking; this competition does not require any previous programming, linguistics, or math experience.
Over the years, the number of participants at the University of Utah host site has grown. This year, participants came from multiple counties in Utah and even from as far away as Twin Falls, Idaho. The University of Utah is one of the sites in North America that has had participants make it to the final round of competition.
If you want to get involved in next year’s 2026 NACLO competition, high school students interested in the competition can join our practice sessions hosted in December and January. Well ahead of the 2026 competition, the Department of Linguistics is also happy to help students and teachers set up high school linguistics clubs, visit their classes to talk about NACLO, and give presentations about Computational Linguistics and careers in Linguistics. Contact us at linguistics@utah.edu or Aniello.desanto@utah.edu.