Summary Of Me Talk Pretty One Day Sedaris

“Me Talk Pretty One Day” is a humorous and sarcastic article written by David Sedaris. It describes the experience that he had returning to school as an adult to learn French in Paris and the challenges that he is faced with along the way. He recalls his time there where he and his classmates are tormented by their teacher over the course of the year. This leads Sedaris to feel alienated during class and in public places due to the harsh repercussions that the teacher had bestowed upon them for even the simplest of errors. It takes him several months of this kind of suffering before he can fluently understand the language. Through his subtle humor and sarcastic remarks, Sedaris hints at a deeper meaning in his article. Through all the struggles that he endured in class, he never gave up on his goal of becoming proficient at understanding the French

“I’d spend four hours a night on my homework, working even longer whenever we were assigned an essay” (Sedaris, 1999). It was frustrating for him to have his teacher unsatisfied with it even with the amount of effort that he put in to it. His goal is evident that even though he wanted to do other things, he was determined to work on homework all night if he had to. He doesn’t want to give up on his overall goal of learning French. The extra time that he puts into homework at night gives the audience a sense that the French class is very difficult and that he is “refusing to stand convicted on the teacher’s charges of laziness” (Sedaris, 1999). Sedaris’ does however take the time to do his homework humorously in the responses that he gives as answers. He’s trying to have some fun out of a relatively dim situation. This would be a good coping method to use during the stressful time that he’s in and a valuable life lesson. He’s using his sense of humor to get him through