Chapter 156

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Protagonist:

Li Xiulan

These five hundred yuan were the first money the two brothers had earned through their own efforts!

It could be considered the first pot of gold in their lives.

Wang Erhai was overjoyed because of this; he planned to give himself a day off tomorrow, and as it happened, tomorrow was market day, so he wanted to go to town and have a good time.

"Little brother, want to go to town and play tomorrow? I'll take you somewhere fun."

Wang Erhai was grinning.

Wang Xiaohua hesitated a bit:

"Go play what fun thing? I still want to save up money to fix my teeth."

Wang Erhai patted Wang Xiaohua on the shoulder:

"Relax, it won't cost much!"

Then he also said:

"Since we earned this money, we have to know how to enjoy it. If you only bury your head earning money but don't take it out to enjoy, what's the meaning of earning money?"

Wang Xiaohua felt Wang Erhai's words made a bit of sense, but also felt something was a bit off.

But in the end he still nodded in agreement.

After all, he and his second brother had worked hard together for over a week; his second brother wanted to go have fun, so he couldn't dampen his second brother's enthusiasm.

So the next day, the two of them rode a small four-wheeler together to town.

Arriving in town, Wang Erhai took Wang Xiaohua into an underground internet cafe.

The place was thick with smoke and fumes; many teenagers were online playing games.

Wang Xiaohua smelled the strong cigarette smoke in the air and felt a bit unaccustomed to it.

Wang Erhai went to the front desk and opened two machines.

"Little brother, I'll teach you to play a game. This CF — once you play a few rounds, you'll definitely fall in love with it!"

Wang Xiaohua nodded, then followed Wang Erhai to play CF.

As a result, not long into playing, Wang Xiaohua had died several times.

Most importantly, the first-person perspective game screen kept shaking back and forth; Wang Xiaohua felt very unaccustomed to it, and after playing a while he got dizzy and disoriented.

And as a newbie, he kept dragging his second brother down, which made him feel quite embarrassed.

So he said:

"Second brother, how about you play by yourself? I'm really not cut out for this; the screen shaking makes me feel worse than carsickness. If I keep playing I might throw up."

Wang Erhai smiled at this and no longer pressed Wang Xiaohua to play with him:

"Alright then. You play whatever you want. There are several games on the desktop. This computer is open for three hours, one yuan fifty per hour, so we can't waste it. I'll keep playing mine!"

Wang Erhai wore headphones and continued playing CF intently.

Wang Xiaohua wasn't interested in games.

He opened Baidu search, using two-finger typing, and randomly searched for some things.

He suddenly thought his English grades had never improved, and wondered if he could find English teaching methods online.

So with a let's-try attitude he searched, and sure enough, many English teaching methods popped up.

At that time, the most popular English teaching wasn't New Oriental, but Li Yang's Crazy English.

Wang Xiaohua clicked open a Li Yang Crazy English speech titled "Step English Underfoot." The learning methods spoken of in the video were somewhat extreme, but extremely incendiary.

One point made Wang Xiaohua feel deep resonance: Li Yang said learning English must have the courage to open your mouth; not opening your mouth means you won't learn English well. Opening your mouth and reading aloud loudly cultivates language sense; once you have language sense, you can see an English sentence and make the most correct choice subconsciously. Grammar is secondary instead, because foreigners don't study grammar either.

Wang Xiaohua felt that perhaps it was because he didn't dare open his mouth and couldn't cultivate language sense that he learned English poorly.

Thinking carefully again about those classmates with good English grades, their spoken English was indeed quite good.

So how should one open one's mouth to learn English?

Wang Xiaohua continued watching with this question.

The video mentioned a simple and crude method: memorize vocabulary, read English passages aloud, and if conditions allow, read along with English news.

Wang Xiaohua had memorized vocabulary and textbooks before, but he did it silently, never reading aloud, because his pronunciation of many words was inaccurate, which made him not dare to open his mouth.

"You must open your mouth and read. You can't learn mute English; otherwise you'll never achieve real progress. Open your mouth to learn English, take the first step, and you're not far from success!"

Wang Xiaohua was moved by these words.

Mainly because Li Yang's speech was too incendiary.

Regardless of whether the method is correct or not, it indeed can inspire people to act.

"Second brother, I want to go buy an MP3!"

Wang Xiaohua suddenly said this to Wang Erhai beside him.

He wanted to buy an MP3 to download some English audio, then read and recite along with the audio.

Perhaps with an MP3's help, he could catch up on English this summer vacation.

"What did you say?"

Wang Erhai wore headphones, his ears full of alley combat gunshots; he didn't hear what Wang Xiaohua said.

"I said, I want to go buy an MP3!"

Wang Xiaohua repeated his words.

Wang Erhai stared blankly, somewhat stunned:

"Didn't you say you wanted to save money to fix your teeth?"

Wang Xiaohua, however, said:

"Fixing your teeth is very important, but learning English well is also very important! Will you come with me to buy one later? I don't really understand."

Wang Erhai agreed readily:

"Sure, sure, sure. Once we get off the plane later, I'll go with you!"

After Wang Erhai finished speaking, he continued playing games.

Wang Xiaohua, on the other hand, continued watching English teaching videos.

The more he watched, the more he felt he had missed out on so much.

If he had been able to go online and see these easy-to-understand English teaching videos back in third grade of primary school, how could his English grades have fallen behind this much? How could they have held him back? Even developing to the point of nearly becoming a heart demon he couldn't overcome!

One can only say, information and tools, these two things, are really far more important than effort!

If you can get information a step ahead of others, you'll definitely achieve twice the result with half the effort compared to them!

If you have a good tool, then no matter what you do, you'll definitely be much more relaxed than others!

Wang Xiaohua seemed to suddenly understand why city kids could study so well; they not only got more information than rural children, but also got to use more advanced learning tools than rural children.

Take MP3 players, this little thing — many rural children wouldn't have one, while in the city they were probably already commonplace.

Coming out of the underground internet cafe, Wang Erhai took Wang Xiaohua to a mobile phone shop in town.

They spent over two hundred yuan and bought an MP3; this MP3 came with a memory card and earphones, and could store a lot of audio.

After buying the MP3, Wang Xiaohua had Wang Erhai take him back into the underground internet cafe and opened a computer for half an hour.

On the computer, Wang Xiaohua downloaded all the text audio for the first-year high school English textbook; besides that, he also downloaded the Crazy English Must-Memorize 20 English Essays, planning to go back and read along with the audio every day in his spare time.

He felt that as long as he worked hard for one summer vacation, by the time he started first year of high school, English definitely wouldn't hold him back anymore.

However, when he returned home with the MP3, an unexpected thing happened.

The blow this matter dealt him could be said to be unprecedented...