Beijing Language Institution

There were twenty-six freshmen in English at Beijing Language Institute in the class of 1983.1 was assigned to Group Two with another eleven boys and girls who had from big cities in China. I was told that language study required smallness so that we would get more attention from the skillful teachers. The better the school, the smaller the class. I realized that my classmates were already all in English, simple sentences tossed out to each other in their red-faced introductions and carefree chatting. Their intonations were curving and dramatic and their pronunciation refined and accurate. But as I stretched to catch the drips and drops of their humming dialogue. I couldn’t understand it all, only that it was English. Those words now flying before me sounded a little familiar. I had read them and tried to speak them, but I had never heard them back to me in such a speedy, fluent manner. My big plan of the city folks was thawing before my eyes.