But the spectre of delivering a speech brown-nosing the teachers jammed her imagination. At first she didn't want to and then she couldn't seem to write that speech. She should have thought of it as "a great honor," as her father called it. But she was mortified. She still had a slight accent, and she did not like to speak in public, subjecting herself to her classmates' ridicule. It also took no great figuring to see that to deliver a eulogy for a convent full of crazy, old, overweight nuns was no way to endear herself to her peers.

Question

But the spectre of delivering a speech brown-nosing the teachers jammed her imagination. At first she didn't want to and then she couldn't seem to write that speech. She should have thought of it as "a great honor," as her father called it. But she was mortified. She still had a slight accent, and she did not like to speak in public, subjecting herself to her classmates' ridicule. It also took no great figuring to see that to deliver a eulogy for a convent full of crazy, old, overweight nuns was no way to endear herself to her peers.

–“Daughter of Invention,”
Julia Alvarez

Read the passage about Yoyo. In two to three sentences, explain how language reveals a conflict she experiences.

Answer 1

The use of the phrase "brown-nosing the teachers" and the mention of her "slight accent" reveals a conflict within Yoyo between her desire to please authority figures and fit in with her peers. She is torn between the pressure to deliver a speech and her fear of being judged or ridiculed by her classmates.

Answer 2

Language reveals a conflict that Yoyo experiences around delivering a speech. Yoyo's reluctance to write the speech and her fear of speaking in public, possibly due to her slight accent, show her internal struggle and anxiety about being ridiculed by her classmates. This conflict between her father's expectation for her to view it as an honor and her own feelings of embarrassment is reflected in her words.