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Analysis Of Me Talk Pretty One Day By David Sedaris

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In the article, “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris (1999), the author describes what it was like learning French while living in France. Sedaris moved to Paris in order to learn the language and immerse himself into the culture. He thought this would make learning the language easier. During his time in France, Sedaris experienced intimidation, abuse, and joy. Learning a foreign language as an adult is difficult because of the feeling of intimidation by younger classmates, a hostile learning environment presented by the teacher, and an inherent cognitive disadvantage. On the first day of class, after he was done checking in, he sat down to observe his classmates returning from their summer vacations. Initially, he walked in full of confidence and his head held high. However, that quickly changed when he heard his classmates speak French, and the feeling of intimidation washed over him like waves hitting the beach, “at my age, a reasonable person should have completed his sentence in the prison of the nervous and insecure . . . my fears have not vanished, rather, they have multiplied with age” (Sedaris, 1999, 1). For being a forty-one-year-old man, he thought these feelings of insecurity and fear in the classroom would have ended long ago. If he thought things could not get worse, he was mistaken. The teacher walked in, rattled off commands to the class, and then asked them to recite the alphabet. In that moment, he knew he was in trouble, “I’ve spent time in Normandy, and I took a monthlong French class in New York. I am not completely in the dark, yet I only understood half of what she said” (Sedaris, 1999, 1) and, despite the exposure he already had, he was still unable to understand everything the teacher was saying. Properly learning and grasping a new language requires support and the proper learning environment from the teacher. However, it did not take long for David to learn that his teacher was verbally abusive, among other negative things. Unfortunately, this realization also came on the first day of class. She spoke to the class in a condescending tone, and insulted each student’s ability to speak the language. One day, as she was humiliating David in front of the entire class, she said

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