Narrative

Narrative Essay The essay "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris tells about an educational experience of the author. He moves from New York city to France to learn French at the age of forty-one. Unfortunately, he is in a hostile situation which was being in a high pressure class with an intimidating and cruel teacher. Even though he spends time in Normandy, he is not able to fully understand what is being said by the teacher. He is quite nervous and upset because he has a prior background of French but that is not credible in the classroom. While in class, the teacher asks everyone to present a couple of their personal information. For the reason that the students are still new to the language, their vocabulary are narrow and not sophisticated. Thus, the teacher is very mean to those students who are trying to learn French, especially Sedaris. It continues for months. However, that becomes a motivation in his mind and he decides to take to next step to speak fluently in French. He puts really hard efforts in studying and doing homework to have a better understanding in the language. Eventually, he actually understands exactly what the teacher is saying and wants her to talks more. I enjoy this essay because it is great to read and I am able to relate to myself. My situation, however, is a bit different from the author's as I did not meet an intimidating teacher, but I had a trouble learning a new language. Learning how to speak a new language is be very easier said than done. In retrospect, I remember when I learned English to take an IELTS exam and it was quite confusing me. Until I started to have confidence in myself and studied more just like David Sedaris. After taking an Entrance University exam, I planned to continue studying in my country like most of my friends since the university I went to was the qualified one in my city. However, one day, I accidentally heard about a chance to study abroad and I had an idea, why not? I could try. I also desired to do something new and this was probably an opportunity to change my life. Simultaneously, I realized that how boring it was when I was in my university. I had to learn many tedious lectures, theoretic knowledge that did not catch my attention. Thus, I decided to study abroad. The first thing I had to do was taking an IELTS exam, and passed with an optimum score so that I could go straight to the college program. I did not feel like frittering away money and time on studying in IEP program because it was actually more expensive than doing in my country. I had two months for studying and it was not a long time to be able to use confidently English. Even though I had learned English in high school because it was a compulsory subject, I was sometime confused by it. This subject was not like my favorite ones such as math and physic, but I had never received low score in it. I decided to hire a tutor to study one by one. He asked me to learn lots of academic vocabulary, strong grammar and structure to write a good essay in the exam. I felt like anxious and thought: "How could I pass it in two months?". I anticipated that was easier with my rudimentary background in English, but I was wrong. Moreover, I had to practice listening as well as speaking for they were also important sections in the exam. A lot of work I was required to do in advance so that I determined to be off university for focusing on learning English. Sometimes I felt stressed and despondent about myself. It was not simple to learn new language in a short time, but at that time I had no choice. Regardless detriments and lethargies, I tried my great efforts to overcome this challenge by making an English learning plan. I tried to learn five to ten new words and phrases daily for building my vocabulary up as soon as possible. In reading, I chose title or topic that interested me a lot to read in order to increase my reading skill. Besides that, I spent time on making conversations with my tutor in diverse topics which were probably in the exam and that made me speak more fluently. In my leisure time, not only listened many beautiful English songs which I fancied, but I also watched movies in English. On the top of that, writing was a vital section in the exam so that I needed to spend more time than others. I practiced writing different topics in a short time, approximately an hour for two essays, and revised those essays many times. Later than two months, my English background had improved significantly and I was ready to take the exam with a high confidence. I eventually got an enough score to be able to study in college here and I could understand nearly all what everybody said. In retrospect, I felt proud of myself for overcoming this challenge and planning for my future by myself. I even did not think to relinquish because for me, education was the foundation of success; thus, I put really great efforts to study here and never complaint what difficulties I would face to.