Me Talk Pretty One Day

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Me Talk Pretty One Day Essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day” is a short story written by David Sedaris. It’s a story about what we interpret to be his year studying in Paris, France. We hear of his on going struggles in learning the French language, and of his problem with speaking the language in public. David story is quite special in the sense that he’s actually forty-one. He’s not special in the sense that he’s going back to college, but rather in the sense that he’s in his forties and taking a year of French in Paris. Despite having had difficulties in learning the language he’s steadfast in that he’ll learn the language quickly, and be able to speak with French fluently. This takes a quick turn on the first day of class. Their teacher is nothing short of despicable, and the teacher is picking on every small mistake that every single one of them makes. It’s not the sort of helpfully pointing out mistakes in hope of the student improving, but rather the teacher picking on her small minions. Instead of the pointing out mistakes having a positive outcome it has a negative outcome, which poisons the speed in which the students learn. Sedaris tries to become more proficient in speaking French, but the teacher instead embarrasses Sedaris. Learning any language is hard, especially French. Learning French is extremely difficult and it requires a lot of hard work to even speak it somewhat, yet speaking it fluently is a whole other task. I speak from experience – French is a very tough language. In this story we’re told that he knows some French “I took a month long French class before leaving New York. I’m not completely in the dark, yet I understood only half of what this woman was saying.” Page 1, Line 19-20. Here David confirms that he’s somewhat affluent in French, yet he has nowhere near perfected it. Further down we’re told of how the teacher picks on several of

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