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  • Essay / Tan's relationship with the English language in the mother tongue

    Amy Tan's essay "Mother Tongue" explains how the language can be spoken in different ways, all depending on the origin of the individual, d 'where or who it is. grew up with it, and whether the education was taken away or not. Tan was an Asian-American writer and her passion was language. She grew up with her mother who was Chinese. Tan's life was affected and brought her shame, but she eventually learns to understand her past. She used language as a tool in her work that brings her ideas. Tan performs different versions of English in her life, especially when she was giving an academic lecture on her novel, The Joy Luck Club. She's had this conversation before, but this time her words sounded wrong because her mother was in the room. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Tan realized that the version of English she uses with her mother and close family is broken English. This replicates some traits of a native Chinese speaker who had learned English as an adult rather than as a child. Tan's mother spoke to him about the importance of showing respect to a family by coming to a wedding according to Chinese custom. However, Tan considers her mother's speech to be fluent and natural, as she grew up hearing her mother's English version all her life, she understands it completely and effortlessly. Yet when she was little, Tan was ashamed of the way her mother spoke English, especially when she saw how salespeople in stores or bank tellers ignored her. It seemed like society was telling Tan that her mother's speech impediment was a huge embarrassing problem. And vice versa, knowing how much Tan was expected, Ms Tan would make her pretend to be her on the phone in order to get the kind of treatment she deserves. Tan wonders if the way his family spoke English might have limited his opportunities in life. . In various achievement tests, her results showed that she was good at mathematics and her English skills were decent. She found the multiple-choice math tests easy because each question could only have one answer, whereas the language questions always seemed more different and she could discuss the answer choices. When asked about an analogy question, Tan had difficulty answering because she could probably connect all the possible pairs of analogies through logic. The problem with achievement tests isn't just about college applications. She wonders if this family of English immigrants might be partly responsible for the fact that there are fewer Asian American authors. If they all tend to do better on the math portion of achievement tests because of the way their parents talk, then maybe they were misdirected by teachers. Tan rebelled against this scientific and mathematical version of herself by switching her major from medicine to English. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized article from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Tan ignored his ex-boss who told him that his writing skills were terrible, but later it was a successful and award-winning fiction. Her writings attempted to prove that she had mastered English. She tried to use flowery and overly complicated vocabulary to demonstrate how well she could write. Eventually, she realized that to write well, she needed..