Help please What the writer means when he says: 'I had never heard spoken back to me' and ' my big plan of beating the city folks was thawing before my eye'? I realized that my classmates were already all talking 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 spoken back to me in such a speedy, fluent manner.My big plan of beating the city folks was thawing before my eyes.