Memorizing the Great English-Chinese Dictionary

"Mathematics, 148 points!"

The top students in the class whispered in disbelief. They all knew how difficult the questions on this math paper were; scoring 120 was already quite an achievement, yet Chen Zhao had managed to pull off a 148!

Everyone was marveling, but Chen Zhao was the only one frowning.

He felt he should have gotten a perfect score in math, so how could he have been deducted two points? Was there a grading error?

After the papers were handed back, Chen Zhao realized that he had answered all the questions correctly, but he had failed to write the word "Solution" for two major problems, and each missing "Solution" cost him a point. It was a case of capsizing in the gutter.

"English, 110 points." The homeroom teacher paused for a moment before continuing, "The English score is a bit on the low side. If you can study English properly, it should be quite easy to improve by twenty points."

Chen Zhao nodded; he was indeed dissatisfied with this score. He had lost forty points in English alone. He would have to study English diligently from now on.

"Science, 295 points, also the highest score in the entire school this time!" The homeroom teacher raised his voice and continued.

The class erupted in an uproar. Most students couldn't even break 200 points in Science, yet Chen Zhao had reached 295 in one go, just five points shy of a perfect score! What kind of heaven-defying ability was this? It could only be described as inhuman!

Chen Zhao was quite satisfied with his Science result. There were a few sub-questions he hadn't been sure about and had answered based on intuition. He had expected to score around 270 or 280, so he was pleasantly surprised to see it hit 295.

Meanwhile, upstairs, in the Elite Class.

This Elite Class had been formed just a few months ago, selecting the top fifty students in the grade from various classes and assigning them the best teachers. The goal was to focus on cultivating these top-tier students, helping them sprint toward Tsinghua University and Peking University to bring glory to the school.

The homeroom teacher walked in, took out the grade sheet, and began to read.

The top students in the class all sat up straight, especially the three students sitting in the front row: Ma Jianjun, Zhao Xiaobai, and Zhang Fan, all of whom were filled with nervousness and anticipation. The three of them had always occupied the top three spots in the school; surely there wouldn't be any surprises?

The homeroom teacher began: "First place, Ma Jianjun, 688 points, second place in the grade."

Ma Jianjun felt a surge of joy at first, but then his smile froze on his face.

Grade... second place?

How could he be second in the grade?

The whole class was in an uproar. Ma Jianjun had been first in the grade for several consecutive months; no one expected that he would one day fall to second! The key issue was that Ma Jianjun was the top student in this Elite Class, yet he hadn't taken first place in the grade, which meant the top student was in another class!

Zhao Xiaobai realized, "It's over, I've dropped to third in the grade!"

Zhang Fan also realized, "It's over, I've dropped to fourth in the grade!"

The homeroom teacher continued reading the scores, but halfway through, he was interrupted by Ma Jianjun raising his hand.

Ma Jianjun's face was pale, and his eyes were red. "Teacher, may I ask who is first in the grade? And what was their score?"

The homeroom teacher gave Ma Jianjun a meaningful look. "The first in the grade is Chen Zhao from Class One, with a score of 703."

Ma Jianjun was dumbfounded.

Chen Zhao?

The same Chen Zhao who had ranked third from the bottom in the whole school last time?

703 points! A full fifteen points higher than his own!

Ma Jianjun felt a bit dizzy. This fact was truly hard for him to accept. After sitting firmly in the top spot of the grade for so long, he had been easily overtaken by an inconspicuous kid?

Chen Zhao didn't realize the sensation his first-place ranking had caused in the Elite Class; he was busy contemplating his own academic performance.

The situation was clear now: his other subjects were fine, but his English was terrible. He had to focus on catching up in English.

But... how should he study English?

Chen Zhao felt a bit lost. He had been poor at English since he was a child and didn't even know how to approach it.

If you can't find the book by its title, try searching for the author; perhaps the name has been changed!

"How can I improve my English score?" Chen Zhao poked his deskmate, Xu Lanlan.

Xu Lanlan thought for a moment. "My English score is 50."

Forget it, asking her was useless.

He had forgotten that he was sitting in the "slacker's den"; none of the students around him had even passed English. Asking them was definitely asking the wrong people.

After thinking about it, Chen Zhao felt that he first needed to increase his vocabulary. The foundation of a language is vocabulary, after all!

But how could he increase his vocabulary?

He had already memorized all the word lists at the back of his English textbook, but he had only managed to score 110 points this time. If he wanted to improve his score further, just memorizing the textbook word lists definitely wouldn't work.

Got it, memorize a dictionary!

Chen Zhao poked Xu Lanlan. "Did you bring that Great English-Chinese Dictionary? Can I borrow it for a look?"

Xu Lanlan nodded and pulled a book thicker than a brick out of her schoolbag. The cover was blue and had the words "Great English-Chinese Dictionary" printed on it in large characters, which she handed to Chen Zhao.

"What are you going to do? Look up a word?" Xu Lanlan asked.

"No," Chen Zhao smiled slightly. "I'm going to memorize this dictionary."

Xu Lanlan wore a complex expression that screamed "He's a total lunatic," "Are all the academic gods this insane now?", and "Terrifying." She found Chen Zhao's decision unbelievable.

Chen Zhao opened the first page of the dictionary and gasped!

The characters in the dictionary were as small as millet grains! Squinting at them, it looked like a bunch of ants crawling on the page! The content on a single page of this dictionary was equivalent to three or four pages of a normal book!

Flipping to the very last page to check the page number, Chen Zhao's face turned deathly pale!

A total of 1769 pages!

It was insanely long!

The English language was truly profound and vast!

But there was no other way; if he wanted to improve his English grades, he had no choice but to increase his vocabulary. And the simplest, crudest, and most effective way to increase one's vocabulary was to memorize a dictionary!

Resigned, Chen Zhao began reading from the first line of the first page.

Once he started, he spent the entire morning at it. Even when teachers came in for their respective subjects, Chen Zhao didn't even lift his head, focusing 100% of his attention on memorizing the dictionary. After all, his grades in all other subjects were already near perfect, so it didn't matter whether he listened to the lectures or not. The teachers all knew that Chen Zhao already mastered everything, so they didn't bother him.

By the time school let out for lunch, Chen Zhao checked the page number of the dictionary in his hand; it was exactly page one hundred.

Chen Zhao did the math: if he could do one hundred pages in the morning, one hundred in the afternoon, and fifty in the evening, he could memorize 250 pages of the dictionary a day.

Five hundred pages in two days.

One thousand pages in four days.

He could finish the whole thing in a little over a week.

This speed was quite acceptable. Even if he had to do other things along the way, he would finish in two weeks at most, which was still in time for the joint examination.

Chen Zhao began to memorize the English dictionary like a madman.

During class, he memorized the dictionary.

Between classes, he memorized the dictionary.

During meal times, he memorized the dictionary.

During sleep... well, he couldn't memorize the dictionary then.

At first, only his deskmate Xu Lanlan watched him. Later, the people around him started to watch. Eventually, the whole class came over to watch. In the end, even the other classes heard that there was a god-tier student in Class One who ranked first in the grade and was currently spending his days and nights memorizing the Great English-Chinese Dictionary!

However, even with a crowd of onlookers surrounding him, Chen Zhao didn't lift his head once, remaining completely focused as he memorized the words and their meanings with his mind full of nothing else.