Chapter 146: Rural Absurd Past Events Chapter 146: English Teacher's Suggestion

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Protagonist:

Li Xiulan

Life in junior high school moved much faster than in primary school, and there were several more courses.

Wang Xiaohua had been in middle school for several weeks before he gradually adjusted.

The terrible conditions of middle school boarding were a huge threshold every first-year junior high student had to cross.

To put it without exaggeration, middle school boarding conditions were worse, more chaotic, and dirtier than primary school.

In the first week of middle school, Wang Xiaohua could hardly fall asleep almost every night, for no other reason than that the dormitory was dirty and smelly; without opening the window, the whole dormitory was stifling, but opening it meant the strong urine smell from the corridor outside was unbearable.

Many students could not endure the school's dormitory management rule that forbade going to the toilet after lights out; this rule had persisted from when Wang Dashan entered junior high all the way to when Wang Xiaohua entered junior high.

This rule made the student dormitories as smelly and stinking as a pigsty, but the school leaders simply refused to change it, and who knew what was in their heads.

In the dormitory where Wang Xiaohua lived, every night several classmates, unable to hold their urine, would sneak out to the corridor to urinate.

Urinating still had to be done tiptoeing like a thief.

Everyone felt urinating in the corridor was smelly, but they could all understand each other and would not report to the discipline office.

After all, everyone had the possibility of needing to urinate urgently in the middle of the night, and no one could guarantee that over three years of junior high life they would never get up to urinate once at night.

Even Wang Xiaohua once really could not hold it in.

He came out to the corridor to urinate with an anxious mood, as if he had committed a great crime, his heart full of guilt.

Because he knew urinating in the dormitory corridor was definitely wrong.

But there was no way; he simply could not hold it!

After that time, he picked up a mineral water bottle from the trash can next to the small shop and put it in his dormitory locker.

From then on, whenever he needed to urinate urgently at midnight, he would use the mineral water bottle to urinate.

After finishing, he would pack it, tighten the bottle cap, and wait until the next morning to go downstairs and throw it away.

School time passed quickly.

In the blink of an eye, half a semester had passed.

The final exam results for the first half of the semester came out.

Wang Xiaohua successfully squeezed into the top forty of the grade, ranking in the twenty-plus.

Because English was dragging him down, he was no longer the proud son of heaven who had always been first in primary school.

He found that many people in school were more talented in learning than him; they could always easily get good grades, while he worked very hard and only barely improved a little bit.

He always had a fear of English from the bottom of his heart.

Whenever he thought that he had almost completely failed to learn English in primary school, he felt he had fallen far behind others.

This fear brought him a strong sense of frustration, to the extent that it affected his learning efficiency, causing him to always lack confidence when learning English.

Unable to overcome his inner demon, English kept dragging him down.

Even though he had obviously improved compared to before, he still had a huge gap with truly excellent people.

Those classmates who learned English well not only did well on test papers, but their spoken English was also very good.

He envied those classmates who could speak good spoken English, while he, Wang Xiaohua, hardly had the courage to speak English; once he opened his mouth, he stammered, his pronunciation was always inaccurate, and he always made mistakes.

People always say failure is the mother of success, but actually from the perspective of human psychology, failure is not the mother of success; positive feedback is the mother of success, just like eating sunflower seeds—each time you eat one, you get the positive feedback of a kernel, which stimulates you to keep eating; wanting success is the same—what is needed is not failure, not setbacks and blows, but continuous encouragement and rewards from positive feedback.

People who can rise from setbacks and counterattack are certainly admirable, but it is obvious that people who have always lived in success are more likely to achieve the next success.

Doing business is like this.

Studying is also like this.

Wang Xiaohua's repeated setbacks in English made him no longer have the sharpness he had in primary school.

Even though he could still get very good Chinese and math grades, that inner demon kept hindering his English learning.

Even the teachers were puzzled as to why he was biased in English.

Because generally, students who are both excellent in Chinese and math cannot be bad in English.

Common cases of English bias actually have Chinese and math that are not excellent either; it is just that compared to English, they appear to have done well in Chinese and math.

But Wang Xiaohua's case—his Chinese and math were at the top-five level in the whole grade, always close to full marks, while his English was only around ninety each time—was simply strange; one must know that the full score for English is 120, and ninety is actually only seventy-five on a hundred-point scale.

For this, English teacher Lan Xiaowan specially came to find Wang Xiaohua for a talk.

"Xiao Hua, among so many students in our Special Elite Class, you are the one most likely to get into the Special Elite Class; I hope you pay attention to English and don't be biased. The teacher knows your aptitude is quite high; you have a chance to get into the top ten of the whole grade later. If you want to get into the top ten of the grade, you definitely cannot be biased."

Lan Xiaowan patiently instructed Wang Xiaohua.

Wang Xiaohua nodded:

"Mm, I know, teacher. I will work hard."

Lan Xiaowan then asked:

"When you learn English, have you encountered any problems?"

Wang Xiaohua thought for a moment, hesitating:

"How to put it..."

Lan Xiaowan said:

"Just say whatever problems you have; the teacher will help you solve them."

Lan Xiaowan was very enthusiastic and was very optimistic about the potential of this shy child, Wang Xiaohua.

The problem with this child was that he was too shy; even if he encountered problems, he generally would not actively ask others but would just bury himself in research.

Wang Xiaohua hemmed and hawed for a long time, and finally mustered the courage to say his problem:

"Actually, up until now, I still don't have the slightest idea how to learn English..."

Lan Xiaowan was stunned:

"Don't know how to learn English? What do you mean? Although you have your weak subjects, compared to ordinary students, your English isn't actually bad. Don't you have your own set of learning methods?"

Xiao Hua shook his head:

"No, I just memorize by rote. Grammar, phonetic symbols, and such—I didn't learn much in third, fourth, or fifth grade, only learned a little in sixth grade. But the sixth-grade teacher taught things I had never touched before. For example, I still didn't know one plus one equals two, and she taught me the calculation method for twelve times thirteen. My whole sixth grade, and now in Junior High Year One, I can't understand English class very well. Teacher, do you understand what I mean?"

Lan Xiaowan was even more stunned.

She hurriedly said: "Show me your English textbook."

Xiao Hua ran back to the classroom to get his English textbook. Lan Xiaowan opened it and immediately laughed and cried at the same time. She saw that under every English word in Xiao Hua's English textbook, there were annotations of the same or similar pronunciation.

He was using this method to memorize English by rote, completely ignorant of the basic rules and underlying logic of English. This was like building a pavilion in the air; no wonder he had always learned it poorly.

That he could score ninety-plus by rote memorization actually wasn't bad.

"Xiao Hua, go home this weekend and have your parents find you an English tutor. Let the tutor teach you the most basic things of English all over again. Otherwise, relying solely on such rote memorization, I estimate you'll never learn English well."

Lan Xiaowan gave a sincere suggestion. She wasn't deliberately guiding Xiao Hua to attend a tutoring class; rather, Xiao Hua's situation indeed needed extracurricular tutoring to make up the basics.

She, Lan Xiaowan, was very busy. The school lacked English teachers, and she alone had to teach five classes. She simply had no time to tutor Xiao Hua individually.

After hearing Lan Xiaowan's suggestion, Xiao Hua verbally agreed:

"Okay, Teacher. I'll tell my parents when I get back."

But in his heart he was very pessimistic, because he knew that even if he told his parents, they very likely wouldn't find him a tutor...

Would parents who weren't even willing to buy their child a tape recorder sign their child up for a tutoring class?

Anyway, Xiao Hua felt this was almost impossible.