Qu Xiaomeng’s first reaction was that her students did not listen to her lecture and she hoped the papers would get better as she continued.
She moved on to the next, and as expected, the writing on the next paper was neat and tidy and 90% of the multiple-choice questions were correct. The comprehension and essay portions were also great.
The total score for the paper was 93 points.
Qu Xiaomeng heaved a breath of relief. ‘So, it’s not my problem. It’s just that some of the students didn’t pay attention in class.’
Just when the thought popped up, what happened next exceeded her wildest imagination.
She continuously marked more than 20 papers, none of which passed!
The lowest score was 30 points, and if it was not for the essay and comprehension portions, the score would have been even lower. The highest was around 56, 57 marks, and she even had to be lenient on the comprehension and essay parts.
Qu Xiaomeng’s brows furrowed tightly.
‘What is going on? Don’t students nowadays even know the meaning of ‘Breaking Bad’? It’s about a high school chemistry teacher stepping on the wrong path and having to struggle between the good and evil of the human side!
‘Okay, even if they don’t know that, they should know that the name male lead of ‘Westworld’, Flood, also means flood, like literally! Water soaking everything! How obvious is that?
‘Aside from that, they don’t even know the meaning of ‘I’m a laundry virgin’! Come on. They should at least get this right! This is a famous phrase from the series ‘FRIENDS’! What are they doing? Some even chose ‘I’m a virgin that works at the cleaner’!
‘The students in this class are really bad. They didn’t even pay attention to my lecture!’
The reason why Qu Xiaomeng set the questions based on American drama series and Hollywood movies was not because of her unusual taste, but because she believed the current English curriculum was boring and uninteresting.
She incorporated elements from the famous television series into her lecture because she wanted the students to love English.
Nowadays, students could only write and not read. Without a sense of language, it would be hard for them to understand the context. With television drama series and moves as references, the students could learn and grasp the context easier.
To her surprise, her method did not work.
Qu Xiaomeng felt defeated as she continued marking the papers. Her confidence was slipping away because she realized her method was wrong.
After she finished marking the papers, she realized that only three papers had passed the midterms and it was tragic to her.
She selected the three papers and wanted to see who they were.
The first paper that scored 93 points belonged to Chu Xia and it was no surprise to her. Chu Xia was not only beautiful but smart, and she had always been a hard-working student.
Since Qu Xiaomeng added a lot of phrases from drama series in her lecture recently, Chu Xia took the initiative and started talking to her. After they started talking to each other, they realized that they were both enthusiastic hobbyists of American drama series and even liked the same genre.
The only difference was that Qu Xiaomeng watched dramas to kill time and Chu Xia watched them for inspiration for her novel.
Chu Xia was working towards her dream as a novelist, so she often searched for inspiring ideas in drama series.
The conversation sparked a friendship between them and they got closer as they talked. They often messaged each other on WeChat or talked face-to-face about interesting scenes they found in the dramas.
The second paper belonged to Chu An with 85 points. Qu Xiaomeng heard of this girl as well as she was a hard-working student. Ms. Zhang, the original English lecturer who was on maternity leave, had once said that this girl was not smart enough but was willing to put in the effort to study.
Qu Xiaomeng then moved on to the third paper.
She had many guesses about the third paper. It might be Liu Yiyi’s since that girl’s level of English was decent. It might also be Wang Fei’s because the girl asked her a lot of questions during the lecture.
However, when she saw the name on the third paper, Qu Xiaomeng was stunned. She squealed in shock in her office, “H-how is this possible? It’s him?!”
Qu Xiaomeng rubbed her eyes and checked the name again. Su Yang’s name was clearly written there and on the side of the name was a score of 71.
Her mind went blank. The whole class had 45 students and she believed that anyone could have passed the midterms except for Su Yang.
What happened? His level of English was the worst in the class. He barely passed his high school English and managed to pass last semester’s English subject because of Ms. Zhang. He never listened to the lecture during class and had never shown interest in American dramas. Besides that, he never spoke English before and had never studied for the English class until a week ago.
‘How did he pass the test? Did he cheat?’
That was the first thought that popped up in Qu Xiaomeng’s head, but she quickly denied it because Su Yang could not have copied the answers from other students. There were only three people who passed the test and the other two who had a higher score than him had been quite far away from his seat.
‘Did he use his phone and search for the answers online?’
After marking all the papers, Qu Xiaomeng was forced to admit that the questions she set were a little off-track and one might not even have answers for them on the internet.
Even if there were answers, getting so many questions correct within an hour and a half without getting noticed was nearly impossible. The odds were too slim.
After excluding a bunch of speculations, Qu Xiaomeng came up with a conclusion that she dared not believe: Su Yang really did study hard and passed the test.
Her brows furrowed tightly as the thought popped into her head.
Even if she would believe him, the other students might not.
How could the student who got the last place in class suddenly score among the top three during the midterms? And he always sat in the last row and never paid attention in class!
No one would believe it!
Qu Xiaomeng frowned. If she could not handle this matter properly, it would spell trouble for him and her.
After pondering for a long while, she believed she would need to call Su Yang in for a talk and find out how good his English was.
…
Back in the virtual space, Su Yang had no idea that only three people in the class had passed the midterms because of Qu Xiaomeng’s unusual quirks.
After he coaxed Little Hus, he carried the bolster to the living and planned to talk to Deeny about his company.
“Deeny, how’s your programming going?”
“I’ve already coded the simple functions of an app,” said Deeny.
Su Yang nodded. “Great. I want to publish an app and its initial function will be distributing part-time jobs to students. We will post part-time jobs from outside and the students can filter and choose whatever they want. They will be automatically registered, and when they finish the job, the completed job will be credited to their account. They can then use it for other things or cash out.”
Deeny thought about it for a moment before she asked, “Is there a detailed product planning for the app?”
“Yeap,” he answered with a nod.
Su Yang grabbed a proposal from his bag and gave it to her. “You can use this as a reference. Talk to me if you run into problems.”
Deeny was eager to have a go. She grabbed the product planning proposal and disappeared.
After she left, Su Yang started to read the translated test papers that she had left on the table.
He had always been a cautious person. Even though he used the [0 Score 2B Pencil] in the test, he could not just walk away without understanding anything in the midterms. He planned to go through it just so he could be prepared for any occasion.
After he read through the translated papers, he started to sweat and looked sour. He started to regret using the special item in the midterms, but he was glad that he asked Deeny to translate the papers.
He only had one thought when he finished: ‘Can anyone really answer the questions? Are these questions even about English?’
He had a bad feeling in his heart.
‘Don’t tell me that barely anyone passed the midterms. If so, I’ll be one of the good students…OR NOT!’
His English was the worst in the class. When everyone else passed, he barely met the passing line. When everyone else failed, how could he be one of the few who passed and even aced the test?
Only an idiot would believe he was clean!
Su Yang felt like he was in danger.
He really wanted to go to Tieba and open a new thread with the title: ‘I accidentally went from the last place to one of the highest in class during my midterms. What should I do? Waiting online. Urgent.’
