-
Essay / David's Challenges in the New World
Text B: Me Talk Pretty One DayDavid is 41 years old and going back to school. After a few French lessons in New York, he left for Paris where he wanted to learn perfect French. As a student, you benefit from certain benefits, such as discounts on food, cinema or other types of entertainment. David moved to France exclusively out of a desire to speak French. The story does not say whether David wants to settle down and stay in France, or simply return to New York. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on 'Why violent video games shouldn't be banned'?Get the original essayDavid is the only 'older' man in school. Everyone is young, attractive and well dressed, which bothers him in one way or another. The school he attends is international. Even though he is by far not the only one who doesn't speak French very well, he feels that everyone is ahead of him. He is alone in another country, which doesn't make it easy to meet new friends. In fact, the story does not say that David had a single friend in France. According to him, he was expected to perform, which I disagree with. The teacher doesn't seem to care too much about her students' performance. She only sees the negative in everything. I think the only one who has expectations of David is himself, which can also be hard. The first day of school was very interesting for David, not only because he was finally able to measure his France with that of others. He learned very quickly that his French was not as good as that of some others. It seemed like everyone was way better than David. I think you might struggle to learn a language at 41. The first class went unexpectedly for David, as the teacher seemed to be making fun of her students and being quite grumpy. David has difficulty understanding entire sentences. The fact that everyone was talking so quickly was a major problem for David. He began to doubt himself, wondering if he would ever learn this. The alphabet game was also a setback for him. As the professor made fun of the Polish seamstress Anna, he realized that this trip would require hard work if he wanted to succeed. As the story is written in the first person, we get a good insight into what is going on in David's mind. He seems to try to avoid his problems by being funny and making jokes. Some of them are funny though. The teacher ridiculed everything the students said, even going so far as to make ridiculous racist jokes about the optimistic Yugoslavian girl. She even makes jokes about genocide. In Denmark, you would probably get fired if you said something like that to your student in front of the whole class. David describes the teacher as an animal ready to strike for its prey. David spoke of his hatred of blood sausage, intestinal paste, brain pudding and his love of IBM typewriters, blueprints and his electric shoe polisher. He manages to fail several times while saying these few words. Of course, the professor starts making jokes about him. He probably saw it coming. The teacher just made fun of the German Eva and the other students. He thought the worst was over, but he didn't know it was just the beginning. Many times, David uses random letters to show that he doesn't understand a word. He tries to be funny again to hide his insecurity. The teacher speaks 5 languages fluently. It is forbidden to speak anything other than French at school, but the teacher sometimes uses English to insult the students. One thing you can't take away from David is that he really tries. He works all night on.