Laura showing off her skills

School hasn’t started back yet but one Cork student is making waves in South Korea.

Laura Cosgrave from Midleton College Cork is one of four secondary school students from across the island of Ireland to have been selected to test language decoding skills against the world’s best at the International Linguistics Olympiad in Yongin, South Korea this week.

They started on Monday and will be decoding until Friday.

She beat competition from an initial national line up of 4,000 students who competed in the All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO), a competition run by the ADAPT Centre, a world-leading SFI research centre. ADAPT runs the competition annually which challenges secondary school students to apply logic and reasoning skills to solve complex puzzles in unfamiliar languages. The other three students competing in the final are from Monaghan, Belfast and Dublin.

The All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO) challenges students to use their lateral thinking skills to solve puzzles in languages from all over the globe. Students must analyse the data they are given to work out the ‘rules’ of this new language.

These transferable skills are very important in other subjects such as mathematics, coding and learning new languages. AILO helps students to develop a powerful blend of problem-solving expertise and language competency, which are vital skills in today’s global economy.

Laura Cosgrave, who is the AILO National Champion, is looking forward to pitting her wits against winners of other National Linguistics Olympiads from around the world in Yongin. She said: “My experience in AILO has allowed me to stretch my mind by solving fascinating, challenging problems and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. I am really excited to represent Ireland in South Korea.”