Zimbabwean students chase their dreams by learning Chinese

For 18-year-old Nyasha Silver Kusedyo, a Chinese language learner, to master the language, dedication is not just enough, a certain level of "craziness" is also needed.

"When my teacher found out that I was struggling in learning Chinese, she actually advised that to learn Chinese, to understand Chinese, you actually have to be a bit crazy, to understand the tones, the culture, whatever, you have to change your thinking," he told Xinhua.

Kusedyo, an intermediate Chinese language learner at Zimgro Language Consultancy in Harare, is one of many young Zimbabweans chasing their dreams by learning Chinese.

But for many students, the learning process can be daunting. Unlike local Zimbabwean languages which use the phonetic Latin alphabet, Chinese is composed of pictograms and semi-phonetic ideograms.

Prosper Marindiko, another Chinese language learner at Zimgro, believes that motivation is an important factor in determining one's success in the long and often tedious process of learning a second language as an adult.

"Sometimes it gets so frustrating trying to learn the language because you think I have mastered this word, then when you meet a Chinese (person) out there you try to say the word, they totally don't understand you," he said.