Pakistani Ph.D. scholar Sarah Mazhar is making everybody proud by bagging her first win in a foreign language writing competition.
Mazhar is a student studying Mandarin at the Beijing University of Technology since September 2019 and adding yet another feather to her cap of achievements.
Before going to China, she taught Engineering and Computer Science students at the National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad, and delivered lectures to them.
“The Beijing and I” themed competition for the year 2020 was jointly announced by Beijing People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and related organizations for international students to enhance their interest in learning Chinese and motivating them to bring it into routine use for communication.
It is held every two years and this year marked its fifth event. The competition aims to strengthen ties and build cordial relations among the citizens of the two nations.
Sarah remarked that I would recommend all Pakistanis to take Mandarin classes and learn the language if they ever come and visit China as most Chinese prefer speaking in their mother tongue so it would be easier to understand and get to know them.
Sarah shared that initially she found it to be quite hard and difficult but her sheer dedication and focus helped her in quickly grasping the tips and tricks to learning Mandarin faster and more efficiently.
She said that Urdu and Chinese both are very different because Chinese doesn’t have alphabets and instead uses strokes which takes a lot of practice and memorization.
She added that Chinese is very tonal and symbolic, one has to pay extra attention to the context in which a specific word is used which can be quite laborious, however, where there is a will there is always a way, and Sarah managed to successfully find that way.
Dr Li Yi, Sarah’s Mandarin professor at BJUT praised her student by saying that Sarah has been doing exceptionally well and shows keen interest in every topic discussed.
She said that she has many international students enrolled in her class, but she is pleased with the progress of students from Pakistani and encourages all of them to keep up the same enthusiastic spirit throughout the course.
She went on to say that learning the language has opened new doors of opportunities and paved the way to explore various other things. It has helped her in better comprehending the culture and way of life of the Chinese people and aided her in functioning better in everyday activities too.