Anyway a local 16year old Kenya girl, has scored the highest marks in the world in English Language when she sat for her Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) O-level examinations in June 2010. She beat more than 420,000 students from all over the world.
Reports say the former student of St Austin's Academy, Nairobi, is extremely articulate, almost disarmingly so. She is only 16, but speaks like a person twice her age.
According to reports,the first time one meets her, one is taken aback by her eloquent and coherent speech, devoid of redundancies like "umm", "as in", "like" and "yaani" that characterise a typical Kenyan teenager's speech.
Shiro says Nigeria's Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun is one of her favourite books as she "enjoys fiction that is linked to historical events". The work is a fictional account of the 1967-70 Biafra War in Nigeria.
The Cambridge IGCSE examinations are taken in 135 countries. Students at more than 2,500 schools around the world do the course. First,English Language in which Shiro excelled, is the third most popular IGCSE subject worldwide.
But her talent is not restricted to English alone. She obtained two As and seven A*s in the IGCSE examinations. The A* grade is a score of 90 per cent or more.
Miss Shiro said "we only speak English at home. I read everything, and that's mostly due to the influence of my mum and dad. We have a big library in our house. I can't really say I have a favourite genre of literature, I give anything a shot. The news was unexpected, but I was very proud of myself."
Her English teacher at St Austin's, Mr Frank Atuti, says she is an exceptional student and that her command of the English language is far beyond that of her peers. According to Mr Atuti,"I taught her for five years, from Year 7 (equivalent of Standard 7). She is very bright.
By Year 9 (equivalent of Form 1), she easily got bored during English lessons, so I ended up setting special work for her at a level higher than her classmates. She would help me teach some of the lessons, and sometimes even mark work from the lower classes."
Her teacher attributes her skill to her voracious appetite for books, saying that he shared all kinds of literature with her. They included Shakespeare's works, Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Weep Not Child, newspapers and magazines.
"She reads very widely, regardless of genre, but her forte is in analytical skills. She is able to think abstractly, and is very clear in the way she puts things across," Mr Atuti says.
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