The school held the exams as scheduled, with an additional English exam for the finance major, using the foreign language department's paper. However, the teacher also said that scoring forty points would be considered up to standard, after all, they do not need to read and speak fluently, knowing some basics would be enough.
But for students from a country that hasn't had college entrance exams in ten years, this is a difficult task, especially for someone like Ma Lingling who has never come into contact with English. It was almost overwhelming for her; she knew pinyin, but she never imagined that one day pinyin would appear before her with a different pronunciation and combination.
There are quite a few like Ma Lingling, their approach to learning English is to forcibly memorize it, using pinyin or Chinese characters to transcribe the sounds, then repeatedly read and memorize to ensure they can at least cope with this one exam.
