She spoke no French when she arrived … Afghan girl obtains French baccalaureate with honors

Zainab

CAEN: A young Afghani girl has become a media star after she impressed with her learning aptitudes and linguistic skills.

When Zainab arrived in France with her family in 2021, the 16-year-old girl did not speak a word of French.

Two years later, she obtained her baccalaureate (the secondary school certificate) with honors from a school in Cherbourg in Normandy, displaying outstanding learning skills.

Zainab will now settle in Caen where she has been house hunting to study medicine at the university.

Openly expressing her delight with her remarkable high school success, Zainab said that she did have doubts and that she was not sure she would pass the notoriously challenging baccalaureate exams of the French education system.

“When the results came out, I was so happy,” she said.

She had arrived in France with her parents and three brothers to the Normandy region, and she immediately committed herself to working hard to learn the language and do well in her studies.

Her dream was to pass the baccalaureate and join a university to further her education and eventually become a doctor.

“It is a great achievement for me to learn a language within two years and obtain the baccalaureate to fulfill my dreams of studying and going to university in France,” she said, quoted by Franco Blue website.

“Sometimes life gives us opportunities and we have to take advantage of them. And I did my best to succeed, with the teachers and my family who helped me a lot. Studying is very important to me, my family and my parents. I would like to help people and become a doctor. It’s an idea I’ve had since I was little and I would like to be nice to people, to help them. That’s why I decided to study medicine.”

Although she sees her future in France, Zainab does not rule out returning one day to her home country, Afghanistan, if the situation there improves.