Me Talk Pretty One Day Discussion Question #1

1. In the language classroom, as the narrator mentions, we are often asked to talk aboutthings that we would never in reality talk about:
“How often is one asked what he loves in this world? More to the point, how often is one asked and then publicly ridiculed for his answer?”
Have you ever had a similar feeling in a language classroom?

Through Kindergarten and junior year I was constantly taking Spanish classes in school. You would think after taking Spanish classes for so long that I would be able to talk in complete sentences and understand Spanish. However that was not the case and it will probably never be the case since I did not retain anything that I learned in Spanish. I remember every day when I was taking Spanish classes in high school all the Mexican students and even the teacher would ridicule me for not being fluent in Spanish. I am able to recall several instances when I would be asked to read Spanish sentences out loud and would suddenly be mocked in the middle of them. The kids would always make fun of the way I pronounced my words and would always tease about not being able to roll the R sounds with my tongue in Spanish. I became embarrassed about this so of course I naturally stopped caring about Spanish. It finally got to the point where I did not care to try fixing the way I talked in Spanish, which also led to me not caring about the language at all. I was through with Spanish.