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Neria Aylward is the kind of 12-year-old that succeeds at everything she puts her mind to, according to Andree Gauthier, her Grade 6 teacher. So it was no big surprise when Neria recently qualified to represent southern Ontario in the international finals of the Dictee Foundation Paul Guerin-Lajoie, an annual French literacy competition.

A student of Ste. Marguerite D'Youville on Royal York Road, Neria ranked first out of 17,800 students from across Canada at a competition in Waterloo last month, earning her a place at the international level taking place in Quebec City.

Neria said she is nervous about the competition but excited at the same time. "I like it because you get to travel to a new city and make new friends."

Neria's father, Chris Aylward, said he is very proud of what Neria is doing. "She's really tried hard for it. She takes it seriously and enjoys the competition."

Neria practices for the competitions by doing a lot of reading according to her mother, Suzanne Hurley. "You can't really formally study for this kind of stuff. You need a strong vocabulary and a good understanding of grammar, and that comes from reading."

Neria said the Harry Potter series is among her favorite reads, but when training for a competition she'll take whatever she can get her hands on. "Mostly I just get random French books from the library, but they're still good."

Gauthier said Neria also gets a lot of training done at school by practicing at the back of the class with a friend. Gauthier said Neria is a great girl to be around and it shows because she has lots of friends.

When she's not training for literacy competitions, Neria participates in competitive swimming, plays the piano, and loves to hang out with her friends.

The competition consists of page-long passages dictated to the contestants who then have to copy down the passage, word for word, taking spelling and grammar into account.

Hurley said events like this are important because they promote education and literacy.

The Foundation Paul Guerin-Lajoie raises money for education in developing countries and aims to make Canadian students more aware of the issue. Chris Aylward said the passages in the competition often deal with topics related to developing countries.

Neria made it to the international level last year as well. Chris Aylward said it wasn't easy because she was competing against kids from all over the country who had already won at their school level. "The parents actually have the opportunity to try to do the dictations themselves as the real thing is going on, and it's hard." Chris said. "They have a lot of grammar traps and tricks to try to catch you on."

Chris suspects that Neria will do even better than last year, as the competition is open to Grade 5 and 6 students, and she is a part of the latter category this time.

The international competition takes place on May 18.