This humble Taoist priest wants to take the college entrance exam.

Chapter 99 My Dad Won't Be Home Tomorrow (Thanks to Yangyangyangyyy for the Alliance Leader)
On Tuesday night, because Ms. Ye had something to do, we switched places with the biology teacher. Today, Friday night, we will have our weekly English test during self-study.

Chen Shi'an is making faster and faster progress in learning English. After a week of study, he has already memorized the English textbook for the first semester of the second year of high school.

It's currently the first semester of the second year of high school, but the actual learning progress in the class is already more than halfway through the second semester.

Chen Shi'an estimated that he would be able to catch up with the class's learning progress in English next week.

In another week... well, the class will probably be catching up with him.

Because he has always memorized the entire textbook, plus the words that appeared in the junior high school textbook, Chen Shi'an's vocabulary has now reached 4516 words.

By memorizing texts, his grammar, writing, and reading skills have greatly improved. However, grammar is ultimately just a language pattern, and there is a limit to how advanced one's grammar is, unlike vocabulary. According to Wen Zhixia, there are probably hundreds of thousands of words in English.

It's definitely unnecessary to memorize them all. Mastering 8,000 common words is enough to handle exams and foreign language communication.

For this reason, Wen Zhixia specially borrowed a dictionary for Chen Shi'an a couple of days ago. After he finishes memorizing all the high school English texts, he can directly memorize unfamiliar words from the dictionary, which will greatly improve his efficiency. The reason why he doesn't memorize the dictionary directly now is that he wants to familiarize himself with grammar and writing and reading, and memorizing the texts directly is the most effective way to do this.

Chen Shi'an had a lot of complaints about the foreigners' use of foreign languages.

From the perspective of language structure and expressive efficiency, the 'single-character semantic' characteristic of Chinese far surpasses the 'letter combination phonetic' characteristic of English. Each Chinese character carries an independent meaning, and a vast vocabulary can be formed through different combinations. In contrast, English requires creating entirely new letter combinations for different concepts, resulting in higher memorization and learning costs. Whenever something new comes out, a new word has to be created. With only twenty-six letters, who knows how many new words will emerge in a few decades...

In terms of information content, short Chinese sentences can carry a very high information density. A simple sentence like "The spring breeze has turned the south bank of the Yangtze River green again" uses seven Chinese characters to depict the season, action, scene, and artistic conception. If translated into English, not only would the number of words double, but the conciseness and rhythmic beauty of the original sentence would also be lost.

Of course, English, as a more widely used language, also has its unique advantages, such as a clearer grammatical and logical structure and better suitability for certain professional fields.

In today's globalized world, mastering another foreign language is never a bad thing.

"Tonight is the weekly English test. Everyone, do your best on the test. Don't whisper to each other or cheat."

At 6:30 p.m. during evening self-study, Teacher Ye walked into the classroom carrying a small speaker and the weekly test papers.

She looked like she had just come from home; her clothes were different from what she wore to class during the day, but she was still wearing her signature white open-toe leather shoes.

Because Ms. Ye is gentle and kind to everyone, she is the class's favorite teacher and the one they are least afraid of. However, when they do poorly on a test, Ms. Ye is the teacher they feel most guilty towards.

"Teacher Ye, aren't you going to stay home with your child tonight?" a student boldly asked.

"No need, I'll take you tonight."

"mom!"

"?"

Someone shouted that, and a lot of people actually joined in, laughing and joking, calling out "Mother Ye."

Teacher Ye was both helpless and amused. She didn't scold anyone, and her gentle and kind demeanor was truly radiant.

Next week is Teacher Ye's birthday. Chen Shi'an knows that his classmates are secretly pooling their money to buy flowers and gifts for Teacher Ye. He also contributed some money. Putting everything else aside, the reading pen that Teacher Ye gave him was a great help.

However, it seems that Teacher Ye is unaware that everyone is secretly preparing birthday gifts for her. Chen Shi'an is quite curious about how surprised Teacher Ye will be when she receives the gifts.

As for the other teachers... there were no flowers, but there were still small gifts. Everyone in Class 5 treated each other fairly.

"Alright, alright, time's up. Get your minds focused and start working on the questions. Pass the papers around."

The white exam papers and answer sheets were passed from the first row to the back.

Zheng Yining handed the remaining papers to the next person, Chen Shi'an took them, helped Lin Mengqiu take out hers, and then continued to hand them to the next person.

Chen Shi'an looked down at the English test paper in his hand.

He was completely baffled by the mock exam he took when he first entered high school, but now that he has self-studied the first semester of his second year of high school English and mastered more than 4,000 words, looking at the English test paper in front of him is like seeing the truth through the fog. He can understand almost everything, and for some words he has never seen before, he can guess their meanings from the context.

Lin Mengqiu's English grades are only so-so compared to her math grades; she is somewhat unbalanced in her subjects, and her scores usually fluctuate between 135 and 145.

Like Chen Shi'an, she had no interest in English and it was a subject she was forced to learn.

She glanced at the test paper, then lowered her head and began working on the questions.

After she had finished answering three multiple-choice questions, Teacher Ye finally adjusted the sound system and started playing the listening comprehension questions.

The classroom was quiet, with only the speakers on the podium playing.

Lin Mengqiu looked down at the test paper, listening to the listening comprehension questions, occasionally ticking the boxes and making her own choices.

Taking advantage of this moment of free time, she glanced at Chen Shi'an again out of the corner of her eye.

This guy didn't answer a single listening question; he just sat quietly in his seat and listened like he was listening to a song.

Hurry up and write it down! You'll forget it as soon as you hear it!
Although listening to the entire dialogue before answering the questions can avoid confusion due to partial understanding, most test takers do not do this. Instead, they listen and answer simultaneously, only correcting themselves when they discover any mistakes in their listening.

Who else listens to everything before writing like Chen Shi'an?

Noticing her gaze, Chen Shi'an looked over.

Lin Mengqiu quickly covered up her answer to the listening comprehension question.

Chen Shi'an: "..."

Why didn't you cover up your answers when we did the weekly math quiz? You only cover up your answers for English and Chinese, huh?

Unfortunately, Lin Mengqiu had openly presented her answers to the previous weekly math quiz, and Chen Shi'an hadn't copied them, so he ended up handing in a blank paper.

Today was the last weekly test. Apart from scoring 125 in Chinese, he submitted blank papers for math, physics, biology, and chemistry.

English...

It's definitely impossible to hand in a blank paper.

When Teacher Ye saw Chen Shi'an listening without taking notes, her heart sank. After all, unlike Lin Mengqiu and Wen Zhixia, Teacher Ye was not clear about his learning progress and thought that he couldn't understand a word.

But soon, as the listening comprehension questions finished playing, Chen Shi'an picked up his pen and quickly started writing down the questions.

Teacher Ye was taken aback, and couldn't help but step down from the podium to see if he had written anything wrong...

All right.

I didn't make a sound to disturb him.

Suppressing her excitement, Teacher Ye returned to the podium.

The English exam lasts two hours, but for English experts, that's not enough time at all.

In about an hour and a half, Lin Mengqiu had finished answering all the questions.

She turned her head and glanced at Chen Shi'an; he was quite fast too, he had already written the beginning of his essay.

I don’t know if it’s because of her coach’s English writing, but Chen Shi’an’s English handwriting is now very beautiful. When she finishes an English essay, there are no corrections or erasures. The whole page looks very neat and pleasing to the eye.

Yes, I must have contributed to it.

Lin Mengqiu knew about Chen Shi'an's English learning progress, and guessed that he could at least get a score of over 100.
Thinking about how he got a zero on the math test she taught him, and then thinking about how that annoying cicada could at least get a hundred on the English test he was taught, Lin Mengqiu quickly drank some stomach-soothing tea to warm herself up...

wrong.

That's an unfair comparison.

If he's already studied up to the first semester of his second year of high school and still can't get a 100... no, a 120 on his English test! That just means Wen Zhixia's English teaching is nothing special!
If I had been the one teaching him English from the beginning, he would have scored at least 130!

With that thought in mind, Lin Mengqiu screwed the bottle cap on with satisfaction.

Although the stomach-soothing tea was a bit bitter, after drinking it for a few days, she no longer minded the bitterness. On the contrary, her stomach felt more comfortable than ever before, and she even ate more than before.

About ten minutes later than Lin Mengqiu, Chen Shi'an stopped writing and finished all the questions.

There were many unfamiliar words that he needed to figure out the meanings of, and some of the grammar questions he hadn't learned yet were also rather vague, so he wasn't sure if he had done them correctly.

However, for those questions he was very confident about, given his meticulousness, he could ensure that he wouldn't make a single mistake.

Chen Shi'an estimated his score to be at least 115 points, which was his minimum and something he was confident about. As for the questions he wasn't 100% sure about, he didn't know how many points he would get in the end.

Anyone else would be ecstatic to score over 115 points after only two weeks of exposure to English, but Chen Shi'an's expression didn't show any excitement. He actually hated this feeling of uncertainty and needed to master English as soon as possible.

After all, his goal from the very beginning was to get a perfect score; 115 points is nothing!
Seeing that Chen Shi'an had finished his test and stopped writing, Teacher Ye, who had been silently watching him from the podium, also came down.

Teacher Ye didn't say anything, she just stood next to his desk.

Chen Shi'an turned to look at Teacher Ye. The classroom was quiet, and seeing that she didn't speak, he didn't speak either.

Teacher Ye picked up his test paper and looked at it carefully. Most of the students were still engrossed in their work, but Lin Mengqiu, who had finished long ago, leisurely glanced at Teacher Ye.

Teacher Ye's expression became increasingly varied, with a smile playing on her lips. She would nod gently from time to time, glancing at the test paper one moment and then at Chen Shi'an sitting in his seat the next, her eyes filled with disbelief and surprise.

If it were any other teacher proctoring tonight and collecting Chen Shi'an's paper, she might have suspected him of cheating. But she had been watching him do the whole thing.

Chen Shi'an not only solves problems extremely quickly, but his paper is also very neat. Most importantly, he is very accurate in answering questions!

Teacher Ye roughly estimated that this weekly test paper scored at least 120 points, and possibly even over 130.

She had heard Teacher Liang mention Chen Shi'an's Chinese language score in the office that day.

He at least has a basic understanding of Chinese, but he's only been learning English for a few days! And he scored over 120 points! Is this some kind of innate language talent and extraordinary memory?!
"Shi'an, come out for a moment..."

Teacher Ye gently tapped Chen Shi'an's desk, said something softly, and then took his weekly test paper and walked out.

Chen Shi'an didn't know why Teacher Ye wanted to see him. When the teacher gave the instructions, he got up and followed her out.

The commotion attracted the attention of other students.

Everyone looked up curiously at Dao Ye, who was leaving the classroom behind Teacher Ye.

broken.

Could it be that Dao Ye got caught cheating by Teacher Ye? Teacher Ye hates cheating the most!
No...that shouldn't be the case. Dao Ye is the kind of person who would rather hand in a blank paper than write a single extra word on a question he doesn't know. If he were going to cheat, he would have done it already...

Was it because he did so poorly on the test that Teacher Ye had to call him outside for a private reprimand?

Depend on!
The Taoist priest got his kicks again!
……

"Shi'an, you did very well on the exam!"

Once outside, Ms. Ye finally spoke at a normal volume. Her expression was excited and incredulous as she flipped through Chen Shi'an's answer sheet and praised him.

"I really didn't expect your English grades to improve so much in just a few days. It's truly impressive! How do you usually study?"

"I also have to thank Teacher Ye for the reading pen. It really helped me a lot. I usually just memorize the texts and words, and look at the English materials that my study partner gave me."

"The reading pen is just an aid; the key is still your own effort. In class, the teacher saw that you were very focused on learning English. The teacher also knows that classroom learning alone is definitely not enough. Shi'an, you must have put in a lot of effort and time, right? I heard from Teacher Zhang and the others that you handed in a blank paper for the weekly test... I'm very happy that you did well on the English test, really very happy. But I hope you don't fall too far behind in your other subjects either. Keep up the good work!"

“…Okay, Teacher Ye.”

"I feel quite ashamed, as I've been teaching you English but haven't been able to help you much. Who is this study partner you mentioned? Is he from our school?"

"Yes, Wen Zhixia."

"Oh! Zhixia! No wonder..."

Teacher Ye knew Wen Zhixia very well. She taught Class 5 and Class 11. Today, she was proctoring the weekly test for Class 5, while the homeroom teacher of Class 11 was proctoring the test.

"Your English handwriting is also very beautiful. Did Zhixia teach you to practice it?"

"It was the class monitor who taught me how to practice."

"Oh! Mengqiu! No wonder I said your handwriting looks a bit like hers..."

Chen Shi'an thought that Teacher Ye had called him out for something, but he didn't expect that it was just to praise him.

It has to be said that Teacher Ye is really good at praising people. The main thing is that her expression is really happy and excited, which is different from simple verbal praise. When Chen Shi'an is looking at her with such an approving look, even he, who is thick-skinned, is a little embarrassed by her praise.

learned.

Next time you're trying to soothe the class monitor, praise her like that.

……

The weekly English test is over.

Teacher Ye happily carried the test papers back to her office.

After the weekly test, the remaining time will be used for evening self-study as usual.

After evening self-study ended, Lin Mengqiu casually asked:
"Why did Teacher Ye ask you to go out just now?"

"It's nothing, just a compliment."

"Praise you?"

"Yes, she said my English has improved a lot and my handwriting is also nice. I said the class monitor taught me, and she said no wonder my handwriting looks a bit like yours."

"~~~"

"Class monitor, do my English letters really look like yours?"

"How would I know? Write it down for me to see."

Lin Mengqiu took a sip of the warming tea.

Chen Shi'an casually wrote a long English word on his notebook and showed it to her.

He has a very good foundation in Chinese calligraphy, but calligraphy skills are based on Chinese characters and follow the specific strokes and structures of Chinese characters. Different languages ​​have different structures, strokes and penmanship techniques. When you first come into contact with a new font, you will definitely need some time to adapt and practice before you can write well.

Lin Mengqiu was the one who taught him English writing in the beginning. If Teacher Ye hadn't mentioned it, Chen Shi'an wouldn't have noticed that the two people's handwriting was somewhat similar.

Lin Mengqiu wrote down the same English words on the draft notebook that Chen Shi'an handed her.

When you compare the two fonts side by side, they do look quite similar!

The way she taught him to practice English handwriting has resulted in his handwriting now resembling hers; it's a strange and wonderful feeling...

Lin Mengqiu blinked, feeling inexplicably happy, as if she had intercepted the fruit that should have belonged to someone else halfway.

Ah.

Wen Zhixia probably never imagined that after teaching him English for so long, Chen Shi'an's English handwriting would resemble hers.
"It's a bit like that."

Lin Mengqiu nodded, and when she looked up from the two words on the notebook, she saw Chen Shi'an packing his things again, preparing to run away.

I really admire him.

Even though you're so free, why don't you take advantage of the quieter evening study time and stay in the classroom with her for a while longer, instead of rushing to go home with that annoying cicada?
"Here comes your class monitor fee for today."

Chen Shi'an took out a few walnuts from his bag. Without him exerting much force, Lin Mengqiu heard the walnuts cracking in his palm. When he released them and placed them in front of her, the walnuts were covered with even cracks, and she could easily peel them open with a gentle touch.

It's something my dad gave me again...

Fortunately, Chen Shi'an helped her crush the walnuts; otherwise, without any tools at hand, she would have had to use the corner of the table to crush them.

Just as Chen Shi'an was about to turn and leave, her voice floated up softly.

She wasn't even looking at him; Lin Mengqiu was just focused on doing her homework.

"My dad wants you to come over for dinner tomorrow."

"Tomorrow...Saturday, is it still in the evening?"

"Ah."

"Okay."

After agreeing, Chen Shi'an left the classroom with his bag on his back.

After he left, the girl who had been working on her homework looked up, glanced around, and took her phone out of her backpack.

Although Dad didn't say it... he had said before that he would invite Chen Shi'an to his house for dinner when he had time!

Lin Mengqiu opened WeChat and sent a message to her father:
Chen Shi'an said he'd be coming over for dinner tomorrow night.
A few minutes later, my phone vibrated in my pocket.

Lin Mengqiu looked down.

[Dad's going out of town for training tomorrow, why don't you tell Shi'an to reschedule?]
Lin Mengqiu didn't reply and put her phone back in her pocket...

My heart suddenly started beating a little fast.

(Thank you so much, Yangyangyangyyy, for being the patron! You're so generous! May you prosper! Thank you so much for your continued support!)
(End of this chapter)