Two Malay Students Win International Mandarin Debate Competition in Beijing

Languages are a gift and they should be embraced by everyone!

Setting an example for every Malaysian, two Malay students have crossed the seas to prove that language knows no race or religion.

According to NST, Nur Afifah Elias and Arina Sarwah Jailan were finally named victors after winning the final round of a debate competition with the given-topic “Virality on Social Media: Cancer or Cure”. Sounds like a tough and interesting topic! 

Source: nst

In total, they won five debates whereby they emerged the champions in the final round.

Following their enormous win, Education Malaysia Beijing (EMB) released a statement on 21 June 2018 to address the girls’ triumph.

The statement from EMB said that Nur Afifah and Arina Safwah have “demonstrated that the quality and potential of Malaysian students are equal to those of other developing countries”. Yass, go girls! 

It further wrote,

“The duo had proven their mastery of Mandarin, and created history for BFSU (Beijing Foreign Studies University) with their win.”

FYI, this debate competition, which went on from 15 April to 15 June 2018, is made up of five rounds with participants from 16 of Beijing’s most prestigious universities. Their participants are very diverse as the students come from everywhere around the world like Malaysia, Japan, Sweden, Australia and other countries. They are from everywhere!

Source: lobak merah

Certainly, winning a debate competition like this one is not an easy task, what more when it’s conducted in a completely different language that’s not your mother tongue! So, we salute Nur Afifah and Arina for their incredible win as they have made Malaysia very proud of their victory! 

Congrats, girls! Now, who’s up for learning a new language so we can converse with our multilingual brothers and sisters? 🙂 

Also read: These Filmmakers Are The First Malaysians to Win This Canadian Web Film Award!