My Journey to English Learning (Junior High School Part I - Ignorant Teenagers' Grievances)

This story is related to my experience of learning English, and I have told it to almost every class of students. Because this is what really happened to me, it is a testimony of my youthful growth, and it also allows me to get some insight and strength from it every time I am in the darkest moments of my life.

The grievances of the ignorant youth

Let's start with some digressions. In 1991, I was admitted to junior high school in my hometown. At that time, my junior high school score was the twelfth in the town, so many people, including myself, had high hopes for myself, thinking that I could be admitted to the county No. 1 middle school after hard work. At that time, there were not many high schools in my hometown, only No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5. First, second, and third are the key points, and the fourth and fifth middle schools are ordinary high schools. Because the second middle school is in the southern township, the people there are proud to be admitted to the first and third middle schools. No. 1 Middle School is the key point of the key, and when you are admitted to No. 1 Middle School, you have basically entered the university with one foot.

At first everything went well. When I entered junior high school, I had a flexible mind and I did well in all subjects, especially Chinese and Mathematics. I just started learning English, so I didn't have any problems. In fact, I am very interested in English, as early as in elementary school, CCTV broadcast Weng Xianqing's children's English program, I specially ordered a small book by myself, seriously study and record, but then the course is getting deeper and deeper, I gradually can't keep up, so I can only give up.

My junior high school English teacher's surname was Yang, and he taught English very well. It's just that Mr. Yang's temperament is relatively gentle, so there is a lot of room for me to be lazy as a student who is not very diligent and self-disciplined. It's just that with a little cleverness of his own, although his English scores are not very good, he can still keep up.

Then things started to change.

Let's start with the environment in which I grew up. I went to primary school in my village, and junior high school was in another village, so I became a relative foreigner. It was still a martial era, and there were ruffians and thugs on the streets, and fights and troubles were not uncommon. This culture has gradually infiltrated the campus. Because I am relatively thin and small, and I am not very honest in my mouth, I will inadvertently offend some "underworld forces" in the school and cause unnecessary trouble. Now it's school bullying.

Our school is located on the outskirts of the village, with a continuous foundation and endless fields in front of the school. At that time, it was not easy for ordinary people to build a house, and it was often because they had no money to build a house after approving the homestead, so they built the foundation first, and then discussed it in the long run when they had money later. The foundation is called "shoulder and foot jian jue" in our place. The shoulders and feet are more than one person high, and the long-term desertion will inevitably overgrow with weeds, which has become the best place for campus teenagers to resolve grievances in the rivers and lakes. Often after school, someone stops a student who doesn't like the eye, pulls him deep in his shoulders and feet to pick up a meal. Naturally, I was not spared and became a regular visitor there. Such things are often not dared to be said to adults, because after the personal grievances are resolved, the perpetrator will instill in you a sense of morality: "You can't tell the teacher, you can't find the parents, otherwise you will look good." "The implication is that grievances and grievances in the rivers and lakes should be resolved in the rivers and lakes, and do not involve the government and family, otherwise it will be looked down upon.

But at that time, beating people was also very moral, for example, the first time it was mainly intimidation, and it was not used. If the person being warned does not know what to do and has nothing to restrain himself, it is inevitable that he will be beaten a second time. In addition, when fighting, the lesson is the main thing, and there are generally no obvious external injuries. When beating a student who wears glasses, you should first take off the student's glasses, hand them over to a special person for safekeeping, and then bring them to the student after the beating.

Sometimes, fights also happen on campus. For example, every time a ninth-grade student graduates, he wants to leave a little souvenir for his younger students, so he goes from class to class to find someone to teach him. The goals of the lessons vary. Sometimes it's based on the information provided by his younger brothers in the lower grades.,Pick up the people who usually offend the younger brothers.。 Sometimes I look at the edge of the eyes, and I usually look at the unpleasant ones for a long time, or I take care of the ones that are not pleasing to the eyes temporarily. Sometimes it's random.,That time it's more distinctive.,The senior classmates named people at the door.,In the panic.,Nervous.,I was also called out.,But the big brother who called me measured me with his hand.,Found that I'm not as high as his shoulder.,So he let me go.,Let me go back directly.,For a while, it was a beautiful talk.。 And I was secretly glad at the time, sighing that the gods blessed me and escaped death.

If you think about it, there were two main large-scale battles that happened to me:

One was with a senior classmate.

That classmate probably looked at me unpleasantly, or saw me as a bully, and every time he saw me, he always flicked his tongue at me in a provocative tone, squeaking, very loud, very harsh. Finally, one time, I couldn't bear it anymore and replied to him, "What are you squeaking?" As the saying goes: "The dog bites sloppily, and the two are afraid." Sloppy refers to the wolf in the colloquial saying, because everyone is very secretive about the wolf, and always carefully avoid mentioning its name, so it is always used by pronouns such as "sloppy" and "Zhang San" to show awe. What do you mean? It's a dog and a wolf fighting, and both sides are afraid. To put it bluntly, both those who cause trouble and those who are provoked are afraid, it depends on who has more momentum and who has higher psychological quality. It was said that the classmate had a bit of kung fu skills, but I didn't care about it at all, and I won the battle anyway. Since then, that classmate always walks away angrily when he sees me, but he no longer dares to squeak at me in public. Since then, I have known the power of resistance and realized how cool it is not to be bullied.

The other time was more thrilling.

At noon that day, I walked into the campus with my notebook (this notebook means a lot to me, so I'll lay the groundwork here, and I'll talk about it next time) and walked to the classroom. Under the big tree in front of the classroom, I was stopped by a group of people, led by my classmate, a well-known eldest brother in the rivers and lakes. The eldest brother counted my crimes, probably because I was innocent and spread rumors that he joined the Qinghong Gang. The so-called uncle can bear it, and the aunt can't bear it, saying that he is "indignant", so he started to move.

That was my pinnacle and my fame. In the face of the siege of several people, I resisted, tooth for tooth, eye for eye, fist for fist, foot for foot, although I suffered a lot of punches and kicks on my body, and my clothes were torn, but they did not get any benefit. Probably frightened by my death-defying momentum, the second half of this battle ended hastily with "the teacher is coming". Several people scolded and left, and left cruel words "next time I will settle accounts with you". After they left, I was bleeding from the corners of my mouth, my fists clenched, and I was in the frenzy of adrenaline rush, unable to tell whether it was fear, anger or excitement as the crowd watched. Thinking about it now, it feels a bit like a soldier after a life-and-death battle, lonely and stubborn looking at the bloody battlefield, with endless yellow sand, fierce west wind and billowing smoke behind him.

There is no follow-up to this matter, and there is no next time after all. But this matter quickly spread on campus, and my bare-handed deeds of fighting bravely became a campus legend for a while, and I also left a heavy mark in the record of enmity and feud in the rivers and lakes.

Many admired my courage, and a good friend of mine (who later became a key member of our gang) went on to experience a similar incident, but sadly, he lost. Afterwards, he shared with me with trepidation: "You dared to fight back at that time, and I didn't even have the courage to fight back." ”

There is never news on campus, and soon the fight was drowned in the dust. But the impact of this incident is indelible. First of all, since then, no one has dared to provoke me easily. Secondly, unexpectedly, my mindset began to change. And this change has affected my growth throughout junior high school.