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Me Talk Pretty One Day Analysis

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Learning a foreign language is never easy. It takes time and dedication maybe even a little humiliation can help. The essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day” written by David Sedaris in 2005 takes up the theme: learning a foreign language. David Sedaris’ essay is an expository text given that he writes from his own personal experiences of learning a new language. His French teacher represents one particular approach to language teaching and Sedaris is telling how her teaching style has influenced him personally. The essay is about the 41 years old David Sedaris and how he moved to France in an apartment near by a language school in Paris to learn the speech. His only experience with the language before was a one-month course in New York, which made it easier for him to understand his teacher in Paris. What can be a better way to learn a country’s language then to move there? So he did and his experience with the language is written in his essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day”. Mostly we hear about his strict French teacher that has made it very hard for not only Sedaris but also the other students. She makes every single one of them very unsure of themselves and takes all their courage to …show more content…

Without a desire to learn a foreign language - which comes from your teacher’s ability to make you feel comfortable – it is mildly scary to learn a new language. Especially if you are no longer young and fresh it makes it more complicated for one to learn something new. We have to dare to use the language in practice, which is not straightforward. It is constructed with self-confidence and good learning. This is what Sedaris needed from his teacher but even though he did not get it he learned to understand French. So maybe after all it wasn’t for nothing his teacher was so unlikeable and abusive? Maybe she had a point in her teaching style. As Friedrich Nietzsche once said: “What doesn’t kill you only makes you

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