The twelve-week study plan for IOL 2026 Bucharest is now available on the Resources page. It is designed for grade 7-12 students starting from zero formal linguistics background, but assumes you can read a problem statement carefully and tolerate frustration.
Structure:
- Weeks 1-3. Phoneme and orthography. Three Rosetta-style starters per week.
- Weeks 4-6. Morphology – agglutinative languages, ablaut, infixes. One full IOL morphology problem per week with annotated walkthrough.
- Weeks 7-9. Number systems and writing systems. Includes Mayan, Babylonian, and at least three alphabets in non-Roman scripts.
- Weeks 10-11. Syntax and discourse, including two recent multi-text IOL problems.
- Week 12. Full mock paper under timed conditions, then collective review.
The plan is plain text plus links to each problem. No login required. Used by ~80 students last year; the half who finished averaged a 40% jump on the diagnostic mock from week 1 to week 12.
If you cannot keep the cadence, the plan still works as a la carte – pick the weeks that match your weakness. The weekly walkthroughs (Tuesday 7pm Beijing time) cover whatever week the plan is on.
Filed underStudy Plan · Preparation · Problem Types
This site is IOL Club, an independent community guide to the International Linguistics Olympiad operated by Hanlin Education. We are not affiliated with the IOL Board or with any national linguistics olympiad. Official rules, host-city announcements, and problem packets are published at ioling.org. Our editors verify every claim against ioling.org and correct confirmed errors within 7 working days.
Keep reading.
From Three Hours to Six: What Actually Changes Between a National Round Paper and an IOL Paper
A national open round gives you roughly 25 minutes a problem; the IOL gives you over an hour. Four things that change…
How to Mark Your Own Linguistics Olympiad Practice Paper When There Is No Solution Sheet
Worked solutions do not exist for every past paper. A five-band self-marking rubric, the regeneration test, and the four ways students quietly…
The Deadline Before the Deadline: Planning a 2026-27 Linguistics Olympiad Autumn Backwards From the Sitting
Registration for the coming cycle is reported to close earlier than usual. An autumn planned backwards from the sitting, with compression options…

