“Seventh Grade” by Gary Soto is about a boy, Victor, who wants to impress his crush, Teresa. When the teacher asks him if anyone knows French, he tries to impress Teresa. However, since he doesn’t know a lot of French, he embarrassed himself. After this, he thinks he’s a failure. However, after class, Teresa thinks that he’s good at French and asks Victor to help her with her homework. All of this motivates Victor to learn French: the nice teacher and Teresa asking to help her with her homework.
I think the theme of the story is to not be overconfident. I think this is the theme of the story because he wants to impress Teresa too much, especially when he doesn’t know how to speak French and he doesn’t have a plan to overcome this fact.