The Year 9 Red Bend Catholic College student has just placed in the top five per cent of students from all over the world in the international Language Perfect competition.

Emily has been studying French since last year and she, along with her classmates, took part in the 10-day online quiz.

She answered 4,049 questions and earned 2040 points. Emily was placed in the top 5% of the 350,000 international competitors.

“It was translation,” Emily explained, “Correct grammar, placing words into sentences.”

Emily received her results when she finished Language Perfect, but didn’t realise how extraordinary they were – just how many people had taken up the online challenge – until her certificate arrived.

The College enrolled the students in Language Perfect and they started the challenge in class, but it was her effort at home that made Emily’s achievement stand out.

She estimates she spent five or six hours on the challenge, which gave her great revision of her language skills.

“I didn’t even start until day seven or eight,” she said. 

Fellow student Mena Samir answered 1048 questions and earned 546 points. Mena was placed in the top 20% of the 350,000 international competitors. 

While she was too young to remember her family’s first trip to France, Emily is keen to visit the country.

“I would love to go back,” she said. “I like learning the language, I would love to be able to speak it fluently, properly, one day.”