Why or why not? When describing the wording for people who cannot speak English fluently, she makes sure the audience knows of her feelings toward the most common terms. Explain the meaning of Tans title and how it relates to her own identity as both a Chinese American, a daughter, and a writer. She makes this argument in various ways. But where Tan really gets to something deep, is this idea how we acquire language. She is the second of three children born to Chinese immigrants, Daisy and John Tan. Test. She wouldn't budge. If too important won't have to stay too long. But now you have to do a literary analysis on itand suddenly its short length seems like more of a burden than a blessing. How is Amy Tan's use of the phrase "mother tongue" ambiguous? Remember this quote as you read through and relate the rest of the content to this idea. If you believe she is guilty of some stereotyping, discuss examples. How would you characterize Tan's tone in the essay? I hesitate to use the word plot in the case of Mother Tongue because it doesnt seem to have much of one, at least not in the traditional sense that most fiction stories do. Students in agreement might cite Tan's interpretation of analogy questions and Cisneros's poor school performance but obvious intellect that was nurtured by her family. What strategies does she use to make this How did Tans teachers identify her when she was in high school? She said they did not seem to have any sympathy when she told them she was anxious to know the exact diagnosis, since her husband and son had both died of brain tumors. It is not simply, as she first thought, that one type of English is correct and the other incorrect. Economics Semester 2 SG 40-60. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her. 8. -talking to her mom "My mother was in the room", Tan quotes a "terrible line" she once wrote "That was my mental quandary in its nascent state." b. Tan, her husband, and her mother go out together. The phrase "mother tongue" refers to the language people learn to speak first. Flashcards. c. The story helps readers understand one of Tan's points: her mother's English does have intent, passion, imagery, and rhythm, and it shows the complexity of her thoughts. And when the doctor finally called her daughter, me, who spoke in perfect English -- lo and behold -- we had assurances the CAT scan would be found, promises that a conference call on Monday would be held, and apologies for any suffering my mother had gone through for a most regrettable mistake. But it does have a loose progression. It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than "broken," as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholeness and soundness. 2. Latest answer posted October 28, 2019 at 10:43:03 PM, Latest answer posted May 19, 2020 at 7:56:33 PM, Latest answer posted November 08, 2020 at 3:49:32 AM. It explores these ideas through how Amy and her mother use the English language, and how Amy uses the English language differently around her mother than she does in professionalized contexts. We used a similar routine just five days ago, for a situation that was far less humorous. Tan wrote 'Mother Tongue' in 1990, a year after her novel The Joy Luck Club was a runaway success. . /Title ( M o t h e r t o n g u e q u i z l e t a n s w e r s) Her mother attends a lecture that Tan is delivering, and Tan realizes that her mother is hearing Tan speak a kind of English that she does not use at home. ACCTG 205: CH 1 Vocabulary. Tan grew up speaking the formal acrolect of English she learned at school and the more vivid, less correct variety her mother used. 6 0 obj Tan doesn't concern herself with the fundamentals of language, she explains that her job isn't to learn and explore language, but to apply it. What strategies does she use to make this argument? But because she is rebellious and likes to challenge peoples assumptions about her, Tan bucked this trend. The nature of the talk was about my writing, my life, and my book, The Joy Luck Club. Latest answer posted March 28, 2020 at 9:26:15 PM. Unlike most of the other literature youve read for class, Mother Tongue by Amy Tan is short and pretty easy to breeze through. In Amy Tan's short story "Mother Tongue," explain the essence of what "mother tongue" signifies in the story. /Creator ( w k h t m l t o p d f 0 . Tan, by contrast, used standard English what used to be referred to, in loaded phrases, as correct or proper English and was thus able to succeed in getting herself, and by extension her mother, taken seriously by others. The author notes that the language her mother speaks is very different than "American English," but that it is deceiving in that her mother understands more than one might think when listening to her speak. /CA 1.0 While it may be difficult for some people to understand it, it is part of who she is, and it does not reflect negatively on her mother because it is "different." How does Tan avoid stereotyping Asian Americans in general and Chinese in particular in this essay? I am not a scholar of English or literature. Do you agree that family members have the greatest effect on a child's intellectual development? Later, the gangster became more powerful, far richer than my mother's family, and one day showed up at my mother's wedding to pay his respects. How did railroads help boost industrialization? As for accents, it's usually a stereotype of some sort. Describe how others (those who do not know her intimately) see Tan's mother versus how Tan describes her in "Mother Tongue." She points out that her mother is intelligent and reads things which Tan herself cannot begin to understand. Answers will vary but should include points similar to the following: a. Tan includes the story to give readers an example of just how her mother's English sounds and how expressive it is. The mother tongue shapes. WhowasJohnWilkesBooth? 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. From guilty to gracious, annoyed to appreciative, Amy Tan uses a few different tones throughout Mother Tongue. Identify these tones and explain how they are employed (the language used to convey the tones), and what effect it has on the reader. Other Quizlet sets. think my mother's English almost had an effect on limiting my possibilities in life as well. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. -the piece is about how Amy's mom speaks (original language); Amy's mother had a different language then her own. Spend some time evaluating the essays structure, and analyze whether it is right for Mother Tongue. Would it have been better as a novel or a poem, or is a short narrative the way to go? Take a practice test. This text is a great starting point for discussions on culture, language and more. Lately, I've been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks. The Qin bureaucracy had civil and military divisions and a justekst\underline{\phantom{\text{justekst}}}justekst. So mad he lie to me, losing me money. You should know that my mother's expressive command of English belies how much she actually understands. ". As a writer, she used the rigid, grammatical acrolect she had learned at school; as a daughter, she used the more forceful, vivid English spoken by her mother, for which she cannot even find a name, since she dislikes calling it "broken.". Discuss the way stereotypes or bias affect how we see ourselves and others. Tan does a great job incorporating several different tones into such a short piece. How could I go about writing four pages about the essay "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan, citing two or more different authors to support my claims? https://www.etsy.com/shop/TolentinoTeaching?ref=seller-platform-mcnavSubscribe to Tolentino Teaching for online teaching resources: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxVnC3TU90xGfwGGJj--dHA?view_as=subscriberHere is the software I use to make my videos: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=18708\u0026awinaffid=844903\u0026p=Where I get my background music: https://www.epidemicsound.com/referral/pg826v/Microphone I use: https://amzn.to/3kYpflxMy favorite books on writing:The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker: https://amzn.to/38m0FWmHow to Argue with a Cat by Jay Hendrichs: https://amzn.to/2MWQXCsThe Elements of Style Fourth Edition: https://amzn.to/2MZeentOn Writing Well by William Zinsser: https://amzn.to/30ouPnJMy Social Media LinksInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tolentinoteaching/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tolentinoteaching/?eid=ARCDTu1yPrWNU95MIiqiab32h2xup6OJBVFlENV03XB6HHUOFxeS0gGlYvdIx-bKlzwzEW7N8uwtCagPTwitter: https://twitter.com/TolentinoTeach**Disclaimer: Tolentino Teaching is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and AWIN, affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to www.amazon.com and http://paidforadvertising.com/ Do you think her idea is valid? Indeed, Tan conjectures that many Asian American children are probably encouraged to pursue careers in jobs requiring maths and science rather than English for this reason. Hopefully this list leaves you feeling like youre no longer short on ideas for your analysis of this short story. I gone to boy's side, they haveYMCA dinner. The story helps readers understand one of Tan's points: her mother's English does have intent, passion, imagery, and rhythm, and it shows the complexity of her thoughts. literature. She reads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stockbroker, reads all of Shirley MacLaine's books with ease--all kinds of things I can't begin to understand. Writer discussed: Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue" (Link to story) Amy Tan is speaking of writing her book "Joy Luck Club" (there's a scene below), so in that sense it works as a good example of a literacy narrative in that Tan writes about writing something. In dividing the essay into sections, she is able to flow through to her points clearly and subtly. Students in disagreement might point to Dove's consuming interest in reading, which seems largely uninfluenced by her family, and Cisneros's belief that her desire to write came from a "hunger" she felt, even with her family. >> She goes from being ashamed of her mothers speakingfeeling that other people will judge her familyto being proud of the rich culture behind her mothers English. Because she was in a family where their home language wasn't English, her scores in English weren't as good as the ones she received in math. The title of Amy Tans essay is a pun on the expression mother tongue, referring to ones first language. Tan identify the different categories she discusses in "Mother Tongue" almost in the last paragraph, where she named all the kind of English she uses. What is your response to Amy Tan's point about the value of different languages? How is Amy Tan's use of the phrase "mother tongue" ambiguous? Paraphrasing her mother's words would take away from the audience's understanding of the exact type of language boundaries they were dealing with. You had agreed to send the check two weeks ago, but it hasn't arrived.". -understand how her mom talked and how it was hard for others to understand her Tan was born in Oakland, California, two and a half years after her parents fled China's Communist revolution and settled in the United States. Describe how others (those who do not know her intimately) see Tan's mother versus how Tan describes her in "Mother Tongue." Be sure to focus on specific language, punctuation, and imagery used to create the overall tone. 20 terms. /Height 155 Like off the street kind. In "Mother Tongue," Amy Tan uses people's inclination to assume as a way of exploring the subject of identity. Chinese social life that way. Sample answer: Communication is more about intent than specific words and word usage. Omitting one of these stories would get rid of one of her key points in the way language can affect a person's life. It's my mother tongue. She says even her husband started speaking this kind of English together and that it has come to represent intimacy. eNotes Editorial, 10 Nov. 2019, https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/in-amy-tan-s-short-story-mother-tongue-explain-258339. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. Tan refers to how much language impacts/changes our lives. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. She then contrasts this with a moment when she was walking down the street with her mother and she used the more clipped, informal English she naturally uses with her mother, and her husband. Why? -wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal "her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts." Accessed 2 May 2023. Who are the experts?Our certified Educators are real professors, teachers, and scholars who use their academic expertise to tackle your toughest questions. 22 terms. %&'()*456789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of languagethe way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.. /Filter /DCTDecode The story helps the reader understand Tan's later comments about what to call her mother's English-words like limited or broken affect people's perceptions of her mother and her mother's abilities. As her mother wasn't able to speak English fluently, she wasn't taken seriously by the staff. -uses quotes to give an example of her mother's English Who is the intended audience for "Mother Tongue"? In grade school I did moderately well, getting perhaps B's, sometimes B-pluses, in English and scoring perhaps in the sixtieth or seventieth percentile onachievement tests. Finally, Tan highlights the absurdity of writing a book about the relationships between mothers and daughters which her own mother could not understand. What organizational pattern does Tan use in "Mother Tongue," and how does she control her tone? Language is thus more than just a cultural marker: Tan reveals, in Mother Tongue, the extent to which it is a tool of power (or, depending on the use, powerlessness), particularly for those from migrant backgrounds. -better explain her mother's tongue and how others were effected (including herself) Does it drag on too much? endobj One time Amy did this with her mother's stockbroker. And all of the ethnic and regional accents in between. Learn. %PDF-1.4 Many of the terms, such as broken or limited, are too negative and imply her English is imperfect. Answers will vary widely, depending on students' personal experiences, situations, and viewpoints. Mother Tongue. The McGraw Hill Reader: Issues Across the Disciplines. d. Her mother is the audience (reader) for The Joy Luck Club, a book about mother-and-daughter relationships. Still, she said, the hospital did not apologize when they said they had lost the CAT scan and she had come for nothing. In referring back to her experiences through the anecdotes, Tan realizes that she uses a different type of English when with her mother. Although Amy Tan was born in the United States, her writing is shaped to a great degree by the immigrant experience. b. b. eruption She majored in English at college and began writing as a freelancer. Tan calls this clipped informal language her mother tongue, because it was the first language she learned and it helped to shape the way she saw the world and made sense of it. Tan even says that her mother was one of her draft readers for her own book series. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. She says it provides imagery and emotions that standard, grammatically-correct English cannot. Find examples of peopleincluding Tan herselftreating her mother disrespectfully. This is the sociological aspect of language. What is the context of Mother Tongue? Much of Tans 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club is about daughters and their relationships with their mothers. I didn't see, I heard it. Here is the text: http://www.umsl.edu/~alexanderjm/Mother%20Tongue%20by%20. How do they differ? In fact, Tan uses the same tone in the beginning and end of her storythe reader starts at a homebase, sees the journey Tan is leading them on, and returns right back to where they started but with more insight than before. Do you feel that people's abilities can be judged fairly by these kinds of tests? This is not to say that people of other countries do not learn English as well, but generally there is a language specific to the place where they were born: this is their mother tongue. taylor_garrett36. 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Even though the focus of the essay is the author's experiences with languages and her mother's influence on her writing, an underlying theme of the essay is the identity of a first-generation American. 10th ed. My mother had gone to the hospital for an appointment, to find out about a benign brain tumor a CAT scan had revealed a month ago. "9 [5 Start your 48-hour free trial to get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts. And my mother was standing in the back whispering loudly, "Why he don't send me check, already two weeks late. What assumptions are people making about Tan's mother in these situations and why? The main idea of Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue" is the limitations that imperfect English can impose in society and the richness that such English can bring to writing. Eliasib. Give at least three details from the essay to support your opinion. Illustrate your observations with examples from Tan's essay, your own experience, or others you know. In both cases, the perception based on her mother's "limited" English gave people the idea that Amy's mother wasn't very bright, or worse, was not worth their time. 6. 5) Amy's mother refused to leave the office until someone called her daughter. ______ to influence. How does Tan feel about her mother's tongue, -her mother's "limited English" limited her perception of her mother. 1 2 . Tan grew up in Northern California, but when her father and older brother both died from brain tumors in 1966, she moved with her. Mother Tongue, by Amy Tan Comprehension 1. /Width 625 Its not about how long a story is, but rather about its content. How does each have its own type of power? Explain. her mother How does the author describe her mother's English early in the essay limited What does that phrase mean to you? Finally, she wraps it up nicely with a note about how she now uses those various forms of English in her career. Mother Tongue by Amy Tan - Essay Summary, Analysis, Review 742 views May 19, 2022 25 Dislike The CodeX Cantina 17.6K subscribers Welcome to the CodeX Cantina where our mission is to get. Tan mentions several different emotions when talking about her mothers English. Because there are quite a few different tones in this short story, they transition from one to the other. Tan highlights this dichotomy when she writes about giving her speech, saying the proper English words that she was using felt strange to say when her mother was in the room. from Oxford University Ph.D. from St. Andrews University, Amy Tan, like many children of immigrants, has more than one identity, and these identities are primarily defined by language. -7 space 17 space. She says this because it could have impacted her in developing the English skills that were expected in school. stream possibilities" for people in the United States today? Math is precise; there is only one correct answer. When they called her daughter, who had perfect English, they suddenly found her scan. Along with her BS in marketing from Florida State University and MA in museum studies from Johns Hopkins University, she has spent the past 7 years learning how best to reach and teach people using the power of words. In Amy Tan's short story "Mother Tongue," explain the essence of what "mother tongue" signifies in the story. << But I wince when I say that. The difference between them not only lies in how they sound when spoken, but which one you speak can impact how others treat and perceive you. Symbolism, structure, and tone are only a few literary devices you can use for your analysis, but they are the ones thatll help you get the most out of your analysis. This establishes ethos as she admits that her specialty is in being a writer. How do they further her argument? -however, later she decided that she wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal "her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts.

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