Did you know that Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), one of the UK’s intelligence agencies, is one of the biggest employers of linguists? So, your language skills could be put to good use in their mission helping to keep the country safe.
After the huge success of 2023, GCHQ’s National Language Competition (NLC) is back this year and it promises to be even bigger and better! Why not have a go at completing your first intelligence mission by competing?
Who is GCHQ?
As one of the UK’s three intelligence agencies, GCHQ works to decode, analyze and understand hostile communications, a process that we call signals intelligence, or SIGINT.
GCHQ’s mission is to keep the UK safe from ever-changing global threats. They couldn’t do that without people who understand not only the many languages that their adversaries use, but also the cultures, societies and places in which their communications take place.
We can’t tell you exactly how many languages and dialects–that’s a secret!–but their language analysts work across dozens from all over the world. Many of them use languages they have learnt at school and university, or on GCHQ’s own training programs, and many use languages that they have grown up speaking at home or in their communities. Whatever their background, they make a huge contribution to protecting the UK.
Languages are skills for life
GCHQ also has an important role to advise the UK government, and UK society more generally, about world languages. They recognize the kind of impact that knowledge of other languages and cultures can bring to all sorts of organizations, and to people’s professional and personal lives.
Language skills can enrich lives in all sorts of ways, from making you more employable in our multilingual, interconnected world, to helping you to experience life through the eyes and ears of others and therefore better able understand and contribute to our own society.
Inspiring the next generation
That’s why GCHQ is also working to inspire the next generation of linguists, whether that helps them on their journey towards a role within the organization, or to somewhere entirely different. We want to encourage young people to be passionate about languages, to develop those they have and to be curious about others.
The National Language Competition (NLC) runs annually, aiming to inspire the linguists of the future. GCHQ is bringing it back for 2024, with more challenges than ever before!
What is the NLC?
The National Language Competition (NLC) is a virtual competition aimed at Yr9 (England/Wales), Yr10 (NI) and S3 (Scotland) students. And this year, the competition has been opened up to home educated children as well!
During the NLC week, teams from across the UK compete against each other to solve language-based challenges and score points. The challenges come in a range of difficulties and are worth varying amounts of points.
A key part of the NLC is that it requires no previous language skills. For example, many of the challenges involve rarer languages or made-up languages so students can get involved even if they have never studied a foreign language before.
The idea is that teams choose the challenges they are interested in and collect as many points as they can.The winning team receives a special NLC trophy and a visit to GCHQ–truly, a money-can't-buy experience!
When is the next NLC?
The NLC 2024 will run from Monday 18 November to Friday 22 November.
During the week of the competition, each team will have full access to the platform between 07:00-19:00 Monday-Thursday and 07:00-17:00 on Friday. They can compete whenever they find the time but it is suggested they do this during lunches, form time, after school and/or during language lessons.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it: If you’re a parent, student or teacher, why not find out more and check if your school is taking part?