The female student in Nghe An province achieved the only perfect score of 10 in Chinese language.

Find joy in learning a foreign language.

Nguyen Kieu Dung is the only student from Nghe An to achieve this.10 pointsThe foreign language subject was Chinese. And she was one of the few candidates who chose Chinese as a subject for graduation and university admission. The 2021 high school graduation exam was recently held, and Dung took the exam at Huynh Thuc Khang High School – the school she attended for three years. However, because she was a rather special candidate, Dung's exam room also included independent candidates who registered for all three subjects: English, Korean, and Chinese.

Recalling the feeling of taking the Foreign Language exam in this rather "unusual" exam room, Dung shared: "We were quite happy because we had many different foreign languages ​​in one exam room. This was also an interesting experience for me in this year's exam."

The student who scored a perfect 10 in Chinese only started learning the language in 11th grade. Photo: Provided by the student.

LIVEHuynh Thuc Khang High SchoolDung is in class 12D4, a class focused on the humanities/social sciences (Literature - Mathematics - English). Personally, Dung has been quite good at English since middle school and later in high school, and she had even decided to choose English for her university entrance exams. Because of her aptitude for foreign languages, in 11th grade, her father suggested she learn another language, and Dung chose Chinese, initially thinking it was just "to know" and "for fun."

In Vinh City, not many people study Chinese, and it's not easy to find a Chinese class for high school students. Later, through research, I learned about a Chinese class – mainly for workers or those planning to study or work in China – and I enrolled... Dung's first Chinese lessons were in this class. "When I first started learning Chinese, it was really difficult because it was very different from my previous subjects."English"The most difficult part was pronouncing the words correctly and remembering how to write them," Dung recalled.

Although no one in Dung's family studied foreign languages, Dung was a child who loved challenges. (In the photo: Dung with her mother during her senior year of high school). Photo: Provided by the subject.

Since starting to learn Chinese, in addition to completing her class assignments, Dung tries to dedicate time each day to practice, talking to herself and learning new vocabulary. Dung's learning methods are quite varied; for example, to memorize new words, "I rely on linguistic logic to remember the radicals and differentiate them by learning words that share common strokes or have related meanings."

Learning Chinese, Dung also had to spend a lot of time researching customs, culture, and exploring many Chinese films and literary works. Dung's biggest challenge when getting acquainted with this subject was remembering the meanings of words because "the pronunciation and sentence structure are more unique than English."

Furthermore, a single Chinese word can have three meanings, so determining the appropriate meaning for each context is crucial.

Personal challenge

With a passion for the Chinese language, Dung persistently pursued the subject until her senior year of high school. However, it wasn't until the beginning of the second semester of her senior year that Dung decided to choose Chinese as her exam subject for the 2021 High School Graduation Exam. Making this decision six months prior was quite risky for Dung, because besides her already rudimentary knowledge of Chinese, learning for the sake of knowing and learning for the sake of taking the exam are completely different things.

Since making this choice, Dung has also changed her learning method. She decided to quit her classes at the center and switch to self-study because she felt it was more suitable for her goals. To fill in the knowledge gaps, Dung searched for information on social media and joined several online groups to learn about past Chinese language exam papers. Due to the large amount of material and the difficulty level, Dung practiced extensively, "even staying up all night to do the exercises."

Dung's goal is to get into her first-choice university. Photo: Provided by the interviewee.

The difficulty at that time was that Dung had almost no teacher to guide her. She looked up the answers to all the practice questions herself, graded them, and learned from her own experience. However, because Chinese wasn't a popular language choice and wasn't widely spoken, there weren't many learning materials or practice questions available. To overcome this limitation, Dung worked on some questions repeatedly, even memorizing them completely.

Before submitting her application, Dung boldly registered for the Chinese language proficiency test and obtained an HSK 5 certificate. This was a fairly good result, and she considered it a practice run to test her abilities. After this test, Dung confidently applied for her first choice: the Chinese Language major at Hanoi University of Foreign Languages.

Since setting goals for herself, Dung has studied more effectively because she has the motivation to strive. However, when entering the 2021 High School Graduation Exam, given its importance, Dung was quite nervous and anxious. That's why when she received and read the exam paper, Dung focused entirely on her test and only took 30 minutes to complete the Foreign Language exam. Adding more about this, Dung shared: "I finished the test very quickly, but that also made me worried and I kept wondering if I had answered correctly. In the remaining 30 minutes, I carefully read each question, checked each answer, and didn't correct a single mistake. After the exam, after reviewing the answers published by the Ministry, I was quite happy because I thought I had answered everything correctly. However, knowing that I got a perfect score of 10 still surprised and delighted me."

In class 12D4, besides Dung, another female student, Nguyen Van Dan (on the left), also chose Chinese for the 2021 high school graduation exam. This student also scored 9.8 points in Chinese and had a fairly good exam result, above 27 points. Photo: Provided by the interviewee.

Along with a perfect score of 10 in Foreign Language, Dung's other two subjects also scored quite high: Literature with 9 points and Mathematics with 8.6 points. With 27.85 points, Dung is very close to being admitted to her first choice, the University of Foreign Languages, and she believes that with her love for foreign languages ​​and her determination, she will achieve even more success in university. This girl, the only one from Nghe An province to achieve a perfect score of 10, also hopes to become a translator in the future and do the job she loves in her hometown.