Daniel Im

IB Lang 11

Moosman 3

Me Talk Pretty One Day Questions

1. What are some of the details early in this essay that David Sedaris uses to establish a

humorous tone?

The use of onomatopoeia is a detail used within the essay to establish a humorous tone. When

students are speaking French, he would put random letters to imitate the sounds he heard because

of how he wasn’t able to understand all the words and to him it sounded like gibberish. This

shows that the author isn’t afraid to show his weakness and even make a sort of joke out of it.

Another detail that is included is hyperbole. The use of hyperbole cause the reader to think about

a ridiculous image and makes it more humorous to think about because of how it is something

we never could see in real life.

2. How does Sedaris characterize the teacher? Is she a stereotype? An effective teacher?

Intentionally cruel? Support your answer with details from the text.

The first thing he does is show the responses his teacher had to all the students. Even with minor

mistakes, she really points them out and exposes them making fun of the student and establishing

a presence that failure is not acceptable. It is sort of like the stereotype that is applied on teachers

who are mean and harsh to their students and no one collectively likes that person. On the second

page, Sedairs states, “Next came a beautiful Yugoslav who identified herself as an optimist,

saying that she loved everything that life had to offer...She crouched low for her attack…”Oh

yeah? And do you love your little war?””(Sedaris, 2) This Yugoslav wanted to show that she was

an optimist and the teacher wasn’t afraid to attack her about something that could be seen as
insensitive. The teacher's cruelty seems intentional because of how she does it to everyone else

and doesn’t hesitate. The thing is that this is effective because at first, Sedaris has a hard time

understanding French but at the end, he seemed to have drastically improved how he had the

motivation to prove his teacher wrong.

3. Identify an example of hyperbole and an example of understatement from the text.

Hyperbole: “Had front teeth the size of tombstones.” This is an exaggeration about the size of the

person’s front teeth. No teeth is literally the size of tombstones for humans.

Understatement: “I delivered an effortless list of things that I detest.” Previously stated, he spent

a lot of effort coming up with this list.

4. What aspect of the experience of being a student does Sedaris count on as common

ground between himself and the reader?

I think the aspects he is counting on is education. To be more specific, learning education and

how we took it. Everyone has gone through some method of education and some methods are

better than others. In Sedaris’s case, he had a teacher that was mean and overall cruel. She would

even tell Sedaris that she hated him and this form of method caused Sedaris to become much

more committed to learn and prove his teacher wrong. It looks like an unenjoyable experience

and something one would normally try to avoid, yet it is a super effective method of teaching for

people who are willing to learn. This teacher caused Sedaris to have a purpose to learn. This may

be less relatable but it is part of education and is something that we don’t really realize. For

example, motivation is important for children because it causes them to have a purpose to do

something with it like Sedaris. I feel that overall the purpose of this essay is to teach children that

thought it may seem hard, it can be much more beneficial.