However, skipping a grade also came with drawbacks. Kids like Lin Dongzhe, who had jumped straight from the start of third grade into fourth, had missed out on the writing instruction in third grade. So when they reached fourth grade, they still found it difficult to write essays on their own.
Fortunately, Lin Dongzhe and Zhuang Xiaoting's homeroom teacher taught Chinese. She quickly spotted their weakness and specially assigned them an essay, asking Zhuang Xiaoting and Lin Dongzhe to go home and write it carefully.
Lin Dongzhe had readily agreed, but after school he'd only wanted to play. It wasn't until he got home that he remembered he hadn't written the essay.
By then it was already late. Afraid his parents would scold him for choosing to play instead of doing his homework, Lin Dongzhe found Zhuang Xiaoting's essay and copied it.
If the whole class had turned in essays on the same topic, the Chinese teacher might not have noticed. The problem was that she'd assigned the essay specifically to those two because she wanted to see how well they could write, so she paid close attention to their work.
Although Lin Dongzhe cleverly changed a lot of the figures of speech and wording, the teacher still noticed that he and Zhuang Xiaoting had described the same person.
That immediately exposed Lin Dongzhe's plagiarism, and the teacher promptly told him to bring in a parent, hoping to keep the clever boy from going astray.
So, just a few days after Song Ying had been in high spirits, she was suddenly called in to meet the teacher—and learned about the whole ridiculous incident.
As soon as Song Ying got home, she scolded Lin Dongzhe. Even the usually easygoing Lin Wufeng didn't try to stop her. He thought the boy had