Zubair Qureshi
Students and teachers of the Department of French, the National University of Modern Languages (NUML), were invited by Ambassador of France Nicolas Galey at his residence Thursday evening to celebrate the success of the NUML students in a short video contest on the theme of ‘Astonishment’ or ‘l’étonnement.
The contest was organized jointly by the organizers of the “Francophonie” contest, i.e. the French embassy, the Alliance Française, the Belgium embassy and the High Commission of Canada.
Ambassadors of Belgium and Switzerland, Cultural Attache of the High Commission of Canada also attended the event and distributed gifts among the top three position holders–Awais Dhillon, Mariam Sikandar and Ata ul Waheed Tahir.
While congratulating the students Ambassador Galey said it was a pleasant surprise for him that NUML students displayed their creative skills and expressed novel ideas in an appealing way through the short videos on the theme of ‘Astonishment’ or ‘l’étonnement.’ Faculty of French, NUML, its chairperson and first PhD in French language in Pakistan, Dr. Zill-e-Zehra Bukhari, Coordinator for Francophonie at NUML Faisal Shehryar and students deserve kudos for doing the hard work and winning the Francophone contest, he said.
He praised the efforts of the French Department of NUML for promotion of French Language and francophone culture since its establishment in 1969.
He also congratulated Humaira Sadaf and Faisal Shehryar for their nomination to visit France for an advanced training in pedagogy of French language teaching in the world’s most prestigious institution CAVILAM at Vichy. The ambassador reiterated the resolve of the French republic to support Pakistani universities and schools in promotion of Francophonie and shared his plan to organize more cultural and academic activities all over Pakistan. French language he said was spoken in Europe, Asia, Africa, Americas and an overwhelming number of people spoke this beautiful language.
According to Director Studies & Cultural Affairs of Alliance Francaise, Hannah Bieber the contest was announced back in March this year and a total 20 submissions were received. According to the judges’ decision, all the top three positions went to the NUML, she said. Besides the top three position holders, Eman Amir Tahir, Manhoor Raza, Laiba Tahir, Qasim Shah, Ali Shah Tarif, Farah Qasir, Fatima Azhar Ali also prepared the short videos and won appreciation of the contest organizers. They gave different reasons for their option to learn the French language.
One Farah Qaisar said she was learning French because she wanted to work as an interpreter. Another said he wanted to visit Africa as in many African countries, French is spoken as the second language. Another said he wanted to travel the world and French and English would help him make friends and things easier.
