Ohio State has one of the country’s top-ranked departments of linguistics. Their one-of-a-kind summer program, SLIYS, gives high-school students tools they’ll need to be better students of language. Pronounced, “slice”, the program was developed by Linguistics Professor and Department Chair Elizabeth Hume.

“Our concern is that linguistic knowledge isn’t normally accessible to high school students and unless they have a teacher trained in linguistics they won’t have that exposure.” Hume said.

This past summer, participants spent an entire week examining the relationship between language and culture, studying the different sounds in languages and examining similarities and differences between various languages. Jay Wlodarsk of Youngstown, Ohio, said, “I was very excited and impressed with all that my son learned in one week. The parent session was extremely helpful and most of all, I was able to find out what he could do with degree in linguistics.”

For the second summer in row, the agenda was packed with stimulating lectures, opportunities to speak with native Spanish, French, and Russian speakers, and offered a wide array of learning activities that included scavenger hunts, translating codes, and language games. Donations from alums Gina Lee, Monica Olinger, and Rex Wallace, made it possible for the department to give scholarships to half of the participants.

Linguistics doctoral students DJ Hovermale and Chris Worth were selected to teach this year’s summer program. Although students come across the country to attend, enrollments are kept small so that students can receive personal attention and bond with other participants.

Like many students in the program, high-school senior, Afua Adjei-Brenyah, discovered SLIYS through the camp’s primary source of online advertisement, Facebook. Brenyah didn’t want this opportunity to slip through her fingers and with the permissions of her parents, rode 13 hours on a bus from New York City to attend. On the last day of the program, she stood in front of her peers and said, “This whole week has been great! It was really fun to learn how we can be from the same country, speak the same language, but all the while have different names and pronunciations for things.”