The Institute of English Philology at the University of Wrocław organized the Linguistic Marathon on September 21. The English-language competition, addressed to students from upper-secondary schools, was held as part of the 10th Lower Silesian Science Festival. Fifty three-person teams from across the region took part in the marathon. I Liceum Ogólnokształcące was the only school from Bolesławiec whose students competed against Lower Silesia’s most linguistically gifted young people. And they did so with excellent results.
The team of three students from Bolesławiec (Diana Filipowicz, Aleksandra Idzik and Kamil Pawłowski) took first place in the marathon. The other two teams representing the Bolesławiec high school also finished very high, in ninth and 16th place.
“This is not strictly an English-language competition,” says Katarzyna Cieślak-Ostrowska, an English teacher and graduate of UWr. “General knowledge, intelligence and creativity were also required,” the teacher emphasizes. “We did not expect to win. I thought Wrocław would win,” adds Kamil Pawłowski, a student in class III a. Meanwhile, the best of the numerous Wrocław teams had to settle for second place.
Katarzyna Cieślak-Ostrowska’s students have already competed in the Linguistic Marathon for the second time. “This time I chose students from the third-year classes because they already have some general knowledge,” the English teacher explains. “We were not looking for those who know only English and get a 5 in it, because that is not enough. We chose students who are also good at analysis and logical thinking,” she adds.
The guiding theme of this year’s competition was the complexity of languages. And indeed it was. The tasks concerned not only English, but linguistics in general. “We were presented with a series of sentences in a language we knew nothing about,” Kamil Pawłowski recalls one of the competition exercises. – “By finding analogies, we had to formulate several grammatical rules governing this unknown language and write a few sentences in it.”
Another task involved identifying alphabets, such as Inuit and Korean. Yet another required contestants to pick out words in ponglish, the Polish-English slang used by Poles working and living in English-speaking countries. Other tasks concerned various branches of linguistics: word formation, syntax and morphology.
In addition to knowledge, time also mattered—after all, it was a marathon. “The exercises required both knowledge and ingenuity, but we also had to choose a strategy,” says Diana Filipowicz, a student in class III b. “We focused on speed. We did not want to concentrate excessively on each task and analyze it several times.” “We did not pay attention to the others. Besides, we went there expecting experience and fun,” adds Kamil Pawłowski. The team submitted its last completed task second. Nevertheless, the students from Bolesławiec proved to be the best in terms of content.
The talented high school students do not yet know whether they will link their futures with English philology. Aleksandra Idzik wants to study civil engineering at Wrocław University of Technology. English philology? Yes, but perhaps as a second field of study. “I am interested in the relationships between different languages,” the student admits.
Kamil Pawłowski feels similarly. He does not rule out philological studies, but intends to apply to the Academy of Economics. Nevertheless, this does not mean giving up language learning. Knowing languages, Kamil says, is a necessity today. Diana Filipowicz, a student in the humanities class, is thinking most seriously about studying linguistics. “I like learning languages,” Diana says simply.
What did these young people gain? As they themselves admit, apart from the book prizes, they gained experience. They are satisfied with their victory, as is their teacher. “I am proud of them. I believe they won not only through their knowledge of English, but also through intelligence, ingenuity and creativity,” concludes Katarzyna Cieślak-Ostrowska.
(GA report)