Xu Xinduo looked at Tong Yan’s paper and she was beyond furious. She shook the paper and asked Tong Yan, “The total score for the reading comprehension question is 25 points and you got 3?”
“Mm, I get mad as well when I look at it. My OCD is kicking in, why can’t they give me an even number for that?”
“Why are your marks so low? Is reading comprehension difficult? Do you not understand the human language?”
“Don’t verbally attack me.”
“I’m verbally attacking you?”
“Didn’t you just say that I was hard of hearing?”
“???”
This feels really good.
Xu Xinduo felt that giving him make-up lessons was not impossible, but she didn’t know where to start with the subjects that he was really hopeless at.
Tong Yan’s grades in the sciences were very good. After a month of review, he could achieve almost-perfect scores, so he was clearly very intelligent as well.
But how am I supposed to teach him comprehension and writing?
How???
Xu Xinduo skimmed through his other papers as well. She then realised that Tong Yan answered every question that had a memorisation-based answer.
Tong Yan was also very anxious. He took out his mobile phone to show Xu Xinduo, “Look, my ranking has risen this time— I am ranked 47th.”
“Look again; in the entire class, your Chinese language marks are also the last.”
“Really?” Tong Yan glanced down at the rankings on his mobile phone. From there, he confirmed that his scores were indeed the last in class as it even lowered the class’s average scores.
The two fell into a tense silence.
Xu Xinduo simply sat on Tong Yan’s desk and worriedly with Tong Yan’s papers.
Recently, Mu Qingyi’s relationship with her had eased up, so he also walked over to take Tong Yan’s paper as he commented, “There are certain skills in reading comprehension as well.”
“I checked it before and gave him some tips, but he couldn’t understand it at all.”
“Have you been in the International Class for too long? Now that you’re suddenly transferred back to the normal classes, you sort of forgot how to understand Chinese?”
“He just doesn’t understand human speech!”
“You can’t put it like that; maybe he’s just a little slow when it comes to languages.”
Tong Yan looked at the siblings holding his papers as they continued analysing them. Their serious expressions were like two attending physicians—one insisted that the patient could not be saved, whereas the other said that there might be a chance at salvation despite the fact that he would remain an idiot.
When Tong Yan was about to speak, Shao Qinghe also came over. Still on the topic of Tong Yan’s test results, he suggested, “Or we can ask him to memorise the full-marks writing compositions of the past year questions?”
Xu Xinduo sighed, “That’s the only way, I suppose. I’ll tell him about it in detail later to just look at how it’s written. Writing someone else’s sentence entirely would be considered plagiarism.”
Tong Yan couldn’t help covering his face as he remained stuck in this scenario. His shortcomings were laid bare in front of him and he didn’t know how to take in the fact that everyone was crowding over it.
Reading comprehension questions really troubled him. He felt that the authors really didn’t think much about the works when they wrote it. The standard answers to these questions were all defined by the teachers, causing many of the simple words and terms to suddenly bear so much meaning.
This was also the reason why many reading comprehension questions utilised works of the dead— that was probably because nothing could be proven once deceased. Even if they interpreted it incorrectly, no one would be protesting either.
He reached out and tried to get his papers back, but Xu Xinduo also took away his other papers on the table and said to him, “I’ll have a deeper look at your papers. Then, I will work out a supplementary course plan for you.”