A Young Woman's Heart

Chapter 42 Children Who Cry Easily in Class

The second period in the afternoon was the fourth-grade Chinese class.

Electricity was finally restored, and the ceiling fans in the classroom were blowing hard.

The curtains were drawn slightly, leaving only a few gaps.

But the classroom was still well-lit.

—This is when the sun is at its highest.

Mo Xueyao did not study the fourth-grade curriculum because she found that most of the students in her class did not have a very good foundation.

So when she was preparing her lesson yesterday, she decided to do a vocabulary review today.

That is, some words learned before the fourth grade are selected, reviewed in the first half of the class, and dictated in the second half.

Anyway, the third period is still a fourth-grade Chinese class, so she can check each student's basic understanding one by one.

She specifically chose words that are relatively difficult for children—she had discussed them with Hua Yinyin for a long time last night.

“Butterfly, the butterfly that flutters about, that butterfly—” Right now, she was giving the children a dictation test. She wasn’t sure she had absolutely no accent, so when she said a word, she would always make up several other words with it. “Butterfly—are you done?”

The two or three students who wrote quickly responded immediately, but their answers seemed somewhat scattered.

She waited a while longer before continuing to read: "Petals, petals on a flower, one by one, flower, petals."

The reason we didn't wait for everyone to finish writing before announcing the next word is because writing speed is also a very important factor.

I can write it, but I write very slowly; it also requires repeated practice.

She held the book, calculating how many words were left, while also estimating when get out of class would end.

It was a little slower than she had expected; by the time the bell rang for the end of get out of class, she hadn't finished dictating all the words.

"Don't rush, there are still two left."

There were actually eight more, but to avoid running overtime, she removed the extras and chose the two most difficult ones.

"A riot of colors, spring has arrived, flowers are in full bloom, what does that scene look like? That's what 'a riot of colors' is like, it's a word generally used to describe spring."

"Layer upon layer of green mountains, forests stretching as far as the eye can see, all overlapping in green, that's probably what 'layer upon layer of green mountains' means."

After finally finishing the dictation of the last two idioms, Mo Xueyao nodded in satisfaction.

"Alright, no copying others' work, put down your pens." Mo Xueyao stepped down from the podium and began collecting the students' dictation notebooks.

At a glance, not many people can write out all the words; most of them have left a few blanks in between.

"Ren Wenkai, you only wrote a few words? You're not allowed to leave after class; you have to stay in the classroom." Mo Xueyao slapped his head. "You definitely didn't pay attention in third grade, right?"

"Teacher, I need to go to the toilet..."

"Go to the toilet and come right back."

Most of the students whose notebooks were taken away could relax for a while. Even if there were a few words they couldn't write, she wouldn't make them stay in the classroom like she did with Ren Wenkai.

After all, the purpose of this lesson is to check everyone's basic knowledge.

It's just that Ren Wenkai's attitude towards learning was so bad that he couldn't even pronounce pinyin correctly, which made her a little angry.

When he received the last girl's notebook, he couldn't hold onto it all.

Her little hand pressed tightly on the notebook, her other hand gripped the pen tightly, and her face was lowered.

"Lin Luorui." Mo Xueyao opened her Chinese textbook and saw her somewhat tongue-twisting name on the title page. "What's wrong? Why didn't you hand in your notebook? It doesn't matter if you didn't write a lot, as long as you wrote more than Ren Wenkai—did you mark the ones you didn't know with pinyin?"

"Waaah... Teacher..." Lin Luorui looked up at her tear-streaked kitten face, "You answered too fast... I... I know so many of them..."

Mo Xueyao glanced at her notebook and saw that many words were only half-written, and some words were even half-written without being completed, with many blank spaces in between. The words that were written completely were all neat and orderly, and even the strokes were correct.

"However, writing speed is also a part of the test."

"But, but I can write it... If it's an exam, there's definitely enough time..."

"What if you have to write more words in the future? That means you need to work on your reaction speed."

"Waaah, I...I..." she sobbed, watching Mo Xueyao take away her notebook, as if she had lost something important.

Children are always very emotional, but there aren't many like her.

"No means no. Look, everyone else has submitted theirs, haven't they?"

"Teacher, sob... I... I did know how..."

Humans really are creatures of appearances. Seeing a cute little girl crying to her, Mo Xueyao just couldn't bring herself to be angry.

If it were Ren Wenkai crying her eyes out, she would definitely go up to the podium and grade the papers without a second thought.

"It's okay. It's precisely because you're not good enough that you need to practice. Why don't you have a deskmate next to you? Don't you have any friends with you?"

"They...they don't like playing with me..." Lin Luorui said, looking aggrieved. "They say I'm a crybaby...I...I just sometimes...I don't cry on purpose..."

Her speech became somewhat incoherent.

"It's okay, it's okay. How about the teacher sits next to you and corrects your dictation in the next class?"

"Um..." She seemed a little scared and shrank back, "Teacher...you um..."

"You're not welcome?"

"No, no!" She quickly shook her head and leaned against the wall. "It's just... the teacher seemed... really fierce..."

"Pfft, am I that fierce?" Mo Xueyao scratched her head. "It's alright... uh, I'm only fierce to naughty kids. If you don't cause trouble, I won't be fierce to you."

"Really...really?"

"Okay, stop crying." She took out a pack of tissues and handed it to him. "Wipe your face, and you should probably wash it; it's all smudged."

"Hmm..."

Even during the ten-minute break between classes, Mo Xueyao didn't leave the classroom. She checked the vocabulary list she had prepared and corrected the students' homework one by one.

Let alone writing it all correctly, there's only one person who writes it all correctly.

She is a girl named Tantai Lian.

She misspelled several words' radicals, and a few were missing horizontal strokes or dots. Out of dozens of words, she only made six mistakes, which is already considered quite good among these students.

After all the corrections were completed, a while had passed before class started.

She looked up; the classroom was still noisy.

"Lin Luorui, has the class bell rung yet?" she asked, tilting her head to the girl next to her who seemed a little afraid of her.

The latter didn't speak, but simply nodded vigorously.

"The bell has already rung—Ren Wenkai, Duan Xingyu, why are you still making so much noise!"

The noisy classroom fell silent instantly.

Mo Xueyao rubbed her slightly dry throat and called the students to her side, starting with the best and then the worst.

The first one is Tantai Lian.

"Tantai Lian, you are the only one in our class who wrote it all out, but you still made quite a few mistakes, a total of six. I have already written out the correct way to write the words here for you. Take it down and copy each word six times. Show it to me when you're done."

"Ok."

The students came over one by one, and she deliberately left Lin Luorui's story for last.

When it came to Duan Xingyu, Ren Wenkai, and the others, they simply gathered these fellow students of similar ability in front of the blackboard, wrote all the new words on the blackboard, and then had them copy the correct ones once, and then copy them five more times. If they couldn't finish at school, they could stay after school to continue copying.

This immediately increased the efficiency of the group of guys who wanted to play together after school.

"Ren Wenkai, your handwriting looks like a dog's scrawle. You need to rewrite it. Write it neatly for me!"

Mo Xueyao, of course, did not forget to remind this little guy who was completely indifferent to his studies.

With twenty minutes left in the class, someone had already copied it down and brought it over for her to correct.

“Sun Haihang, how can you keep making mistakes when copying? The first few are correct, but the rest are wrong. Take this word and copy it ten more times.”

"Okay, okay... teacher." He nodded weakly, took his notebook, and returned to his seat.

"Listen up, everyone! You'll have to do another dictation test tomorrow. If anyone still makes a lot of mistakes tomorrow, you'll have to do each word ten times!" Mo Xueyao suddenly raised her voice as if she remembered something. "And those who have already copied it, don't think you're done for now. Go and review it several times. If you don't know something, write it down several times. Be conscientious!"

She breathed a slight sigh of relief and finally took out Lin Luorui's notebooks, carefully checking them one by one.

She received much better treatment than others; Mo Xueyao would explain every detail to her that wasn't written well.

Of course, this might put even more pressure on her.

"Look, those are the correct words on the blackboard. Copy them down. First, finish today's dictation. Let me see... Hmm, your handwriting is very nice, and the strokes are correct, but you're too slow. You don't need to be so slow. Hey, why are you using a ruler to write?"

Lin Luorui was a little anxious, and tears welled up in her eyes again: "I...I...I...for...for writing it well..."

“Writing well isn’t about using a ruler…” Mo Xueyao patted her back helplessly. “Don’t cry, don’t cry. Why are you crying? I didn’t yell at you.”

"I...I don't know either..." She wiped away her tears, smiled sheepishly, but her voice was still choked with sobs as she said, "It's just...it's just...I didn't want to..."

As she became anxious, she cried even more.

"Okay, okay, I'm not a monster, why are you so scared? Stop crying and write slowly. You just need to finish these today, and I won't make you copy them for now. During tomorrow's dictation, the teacher will slow down, but if you're worried about not being able to keep up, it's best to copy them a few more times yourself, okay?"

Mo Xueyao imagined how Li Wanyan had recently treated the children and imitated her manner, trying to be as patient and gentle as possible.

—It might not work for Ren Wenkai, but it's still possible for Lin Luorui.

"Um……"

"Wipe your face with a napkin."

"Uh-huh……"

……

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