Seventeen, Roman Holiday
All courses in freshman year are required, so students in the same class have almost the same schedule every day, except for English classes.
I don't know about other universities, but the English classes at Medical University have their own unique characteristics. They mix up the departments and majors, randomly combining students from the same grade into several small classes. However, when we first entered school, the university organized an English proficiency test for freshmen, but the results were not announced. The only thing was that those who scored the best were assigned to a few English classes taught by foreign teachers, while the remaining students were randomly assigned to classes taught by domestic English teachers.
Lin Fanghua knew about the class division beforehand, so she continued to study English during the summer vacation after the college entrance examination. Therefore, when it came to the placement test, she felt that she was doing all right. As expected, this time she was assigned to a class with foreign teachers. However, there is also a downside: in each class, only three or four students can be assigned to a class with foreign teachers, and in her class, there are no classmates from the same high school, which means that none of her classmates were familiar faces. In contrast, most of the other girls in her dormitory had five or six classmates in their English classes. But this is not a big problem after all; since college English courses last for two years, everyone will eventually become familiar with each other in a small class of just over 20 people.
The foreign teacher was a 50-year-old American named Steve. He was still quite stylish, but his hair had turned white and he had a bit of a Mediterranean look to him. His classes were taught entirely in English, except when he occasionally cracked jokes and threw in a few phrases with a local accent, which always got a laugh.
To be honest, Lin Fanghua's vocabulary and ability are still good. After graduating from university in her previous life, she never gave up on English and took the graduate exam twice, passing the English section with 60 points each time, but failed to get in due to other factors or because her professional courses were not strong enough. However, her listening skills were very poor, and her speaking skills were completely non-existent, which is typical of Chinese students' "mute English". After all, Fanghua only graduated from an ordinary high school, and the quality of her English teachers was not as good as that of key middle schools, so she didn't lay a solid foundation for learning English from the beginning. Moreover, after starting work, she only used her reading and writing skills in English, and her listening and speaking skills were not useful, which became her weakness.
This time, Lin Fanghua wanted to attend an extracurricular class, also in order to improve her listening and speaking skills.
At first, attending classes was quite difficult. Although Steve spoke relatively slowly, it was all in English after all, and Lin Fanghua found it very hard to keep up. Out of ten sentences, she might only understand one or two, and if she was lucky, she could guess a couple more correctly. Sometimes when Steve told jokes, the other students would burst out laughing, but Fanghua would be left looking bewildered. When foreigners asked her questions, Fanghua's answers were also stuttering and hesitant, which made her extremely nervous in English class. Fanghua's life, which had always been smooth sailing since she was reborn, was now facing a huge challenge.
If it were a Chinese teacher teaching the class, it might feel much easier. Like roommates Zhou Yu and Wang Jie, who are also students with good writing skills but poor listening and speaking skills, they didn't have too much trouble adapting to English classes either. Although university English teachers speak much more English in class than middle school teachers do, they still understand the national situation and teach bilingually. So everyone doesn't feel too strained.
Although she also envied their ease, Lin Fanghua still encouraged herself secretly and did not give up.
It just so happened that Lin's father went to Guangzhou in mid-October to attend the Autumn Trade Fair, and Fanghua begged her father to buy a Sony mini tape recorder and 100 dedicated cassette tapes for herself. As a result, she could record Steve's words every time she attended class, and listen repeatedly after class to understand each sentence. Especially every night before going to bed, she would wear headphones and fall asleep listening to English. Sometimes, even in her dreams, it seemed like she was still watching a movie with people speaking English. One time, Yang Qian, who slept on the lower bunk, got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and heard Fanghua talking in English in her sleep.
Fanghua's hard work finally paid off, and she gradually saw improvements. After more than a month of classes, Fanghua's listening skills had made great progress, and she no longer had much trouble following the lessons. Although she was still a bit nervous and stuttered during class discussions, it was already much better than when she first started.
One time, Fang Hua was picked by a foreigner to read a passage. After finishing, Steve praised her with "very good". The girl sitting in front of Fang Hua also turned around and gave her a thumbs up, softly saying in Chinese: "Your pronunciation is very standard!"
This girl is called Luomanli, from the pharmacy department. She's a celebrity in class, probably the first person everyone gets to know and remembers.
The reason is simple, she's too beautiful. Even Lin Fanghua, who has seen so many movie and TV stars, as well as fashion models, in the midst of this information explosion, was shocked by her beauty at first sight.
When she first walked into the classroom, the originally noisy room suddenly fell silent, and time seemed to freeze for a few seconds. Everyone stared at her in slow motion, like watching a movie, until she sat down before they came back to their senses. They continued talking, but were all a bit distracted. As for the students who came in later, they all paused slightly when they saw Roman Li, especially the boys, who slowed down their pace and quietly walked past her, constantly sneaking glances at her.
There's no need to describe her facial features, because beautiful women who have reached a certain level of beauty all tend to look somewhat similar. For example, Lin Qingxia, Zhang Ziyi, and even Wang Fei and Kelly Chen all bear some resemblance to each other. Luomanli resembles a young Zhang Ziyi, but her face is slightly thinner. Yet it's not the overly thin look that Zhang Ziyi had later on.
Roman's facial features are not only delicate, but her face also seems to have a faint glow, making people's eyes light up wherever she goes. Not only boys, but girls also like to look at her. Of course, the foreign teacher Steve also openly shows his fondness for Roman, giving her the English name Lily (meaning lily flower) in class. Roman comes from Shanghai and has a good foundation in English, with excellent listening and speaking skills, making it almost effortless for her to communicate with foreigners, which is probably why she has won over the teacher's favor.
But what Lin Fanghua appreciated most was that this girl was not arrogant at all.
Most beautiful and excellent girls, because they are always flattered, will have some feeling of superiority or be arrogant to others. But Rouman Li was not proud at all, she always faced the eyes of envy, jealousy, or rudeness with a calm attitude, neither annoyed nor complacent. Whether in front of teachers or classmates, she was consistently polite and elegant. Therefore, she naturally became the most popular person in the class. Moreover, soon after, many boys from the same grade came to ask Lin Fanghua about her situation, obviously surpassing Jiang Lu, the class flower.
The charm of this thing is really mysterious. If you say that Jiang Lu's figure and face are not inferior to Roman, let alone the halo of being able to dance. But Roman is not only beautiful, but also has a natural and effortless quality, which not only attracts boys, but also makes girls appreciate her. Gradually, Roman surpassed Jiang Lu in popularity, surpassing Jiang Lu who had made a big splash at the military training camp. At the city-wide university cultural festival a year later, Roman defeated the senior forensic medicine department's flower as a freshman and became the school-recognized school flower.
It wasn't until much later that Lin Fanghua realized that Lu Manli had a star quality about her. She was born to be the center of attention and adoration.
Since last reading class, Luomanli took the initiative to turn around and talk to Lin Fanghua, and the two gradually became familiar with each other.
At first, the two mainly discussed English learning. Lu Manli said that her mother was a middle school English teacher in Shanghai, and she had been forced to learn English since childhood, scoring 99 points in the college entrance examination English test. She used to do university English four-level exam questions and thought they were not difficult. So she wanted to take the English six-level exam directly in her freshman year.
In the early 1990s, many universities only required students to pass their English courses and did not necessarily require them to pass the College English Test Band 4 (CET-4). However, prestigious universities like Xihua Medical University had stricter requirements in this regard. They stipulated that students who failed to pass CET-4 would not be awarded a degree certificate upon graduation. Therefore, the university required all students to complete two years of college English courses before collectively registering for the CET-4 exam, aiming to pass it once and for all. Scoring above 80 was considered an excellent result, and the university would reward such students with cash prizes. As for taking the College English Test Band 6 (CET-6) after passing CET-4, that was up to individual students to decide, and they could register freely.
So, freshmen in their first year cannot take the CET-4, but no one cares about taking the CET-6.
Luoma Li thought of taking the CET-6 in her freshman year, challenging herself. This idea also inspired Lin Fanghua. After all, at this time, the exams were not oral, and listening had been trained by foreign teachers, and with a bit of cramming, there was some confidence; as for vocabulary and grammar, it shouldn't be a big problem for Lin Fanghua, who had passed the English proficiency test for graduate school admission. Moreover, the freshman courses were just basic classes, not difficult to pass. And if she passed CET-6 in English, she could exempt from taking English classes in her sophomore year, which would save a lot of study time. After weighing the pros and cons, Lin Fanghua couldn't help but want to give it a try.
Then the two girls hit it off and agreed to take the CET-6 exam together in late December this year. With less than 2 months left, time is tight, so they naturally often make an appointment to attend evening self-study sessions together and review English together.
The two people gradually went beyond just talking about English. Due to her own excellence, Roman had always been very smooth and confident from the inside out, with a spirit of initiative. Although she was still elegant in front of outsiders, but in front of Lin Fanghua, she often had a bit of "pointing at the mountains and rivers, stirring up words" meaning. Lin Fanghua was more quiet and introverted, although he didn't say much, he could often pinpoint the bias in Roman's point of view with one sentence. The insight and demeanor that Lin inadvertently revealed, which was not commensurate with his age, also made Roman admire him.
As they interacted more, the two people with complementary personalities became more and more compatible. Being with Roman Li, who was very optimistic and sunny inside, also had a subtle influence on Fang Hua's youthful state of mind.
She can be considered a true new "friend" after Fang Hua's rebirth, and her influence is far-reaching.
Evening breeze: A major character has appeared! She is the ideal woman in my heart!
PS: Last Sunday, students here took to the streets and some incidents occurred, many Japanese cars were smashed. So now we need to strengthen student management, meetings are being held constantly! Moreover, in order to prevent students from taking to the streets again, school will be held on Saturday as well. Alas, the chaotic school leaders.
I estimate that the next update will be on Sunday! Please forgive me, friends who are paying attention!