Ethan told her not to panic because he said she might not be pregnant. Pattyn had never taken a class for protecting herself but she knew that she should panic. When Pattyn went home, she noticed that she hadn’t got her menstrual cycle for about seven weeks. So she went to the store to purchase a pregnancy test. When she got home she took the test and it said
Even her daughter as well as society later refers her mothers English as broken. And because of that in her younger years, Amy felt somewhat embarrassed by her mothers English. And felt that her view of her mother was legit because of instances as such in (3rd paragraph 507). “I had plenty of empirical evidence to support me: the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear
Tan emphasizes that fact that her mother recognizes her opportunities and interaction in life are limited by her English. When Tan was young she used to have to call people on the phone and act as if she was her mother in order to get people to pay attention to her when she had to yell at her mother’s stockbroker for not sending a check. Another occasion Tan describes is when her mother went to the doctor to get her results of a CAT scan, the doctors ignored her. She makes Tan talk to the doctor that they apologize for losing her results of a CAT scan and solve the problem. Tan comes to the idea that the language spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families plays a large role in shaping the language of a child and opportunities in life.
Amy Tan Final Exam In “My Mother’s English” by writer Amy Tan, we learned that her perception on her mother’s English had evolved over-time. As a writer Amy Tan feels that language is her way or tool of getting a point across, she even uses “All the English she grew up with”, meaning the fractured English her mother taught her. Tan says, “It is the sort of English that is our language of Intimacy, the English that relates to family talk, and the English that I grew up with”. Tan’s main point is that even though her mother speaks what some would call broken English, to her it’s beautiful to other “English speakers” it is abnormal. I think that her mother has been labeled or stereotyped.
For example, "It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language I grew up with" (397). Tan is so used to hearing her mother talk in a "Broken" (398) English, which she does not seem to notice much of a difference between broken English and clear English. She grew up listening to her mother talk this way and has gotten used to it. This way when Tan and her mother talk it is how their family talks, their own special way they communicate to one another. Rodriguez shares this same family quality like Tan and her mother’s language.
I answered her back, yelling, 'There is! I go up to see the fairies!' Frances' mother, obviously, did not believe her daughter and sent her to the attic bedroom which she shared with her older cousin Elsie Wright. She also made sure to ask Elsie if she had seen these fairies, to which Elsie said she had. After being teased mercilessly, Elsie concocted a plan to fool the adults.
An In-Deep Understanding of “Mother Tongue” In the essay “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan accomplishes in three things simultaneously: she appeals the audiences emotionally by providing the pictures of the experiences between her mother and her; she shows the struggle of cultural racism that her mother and she go through without pointing out directly; and she puts some odd things into the essay and make it expressive. Amy Tan’s essay is very successful because she writes in her personal and “easy to read” style. Without the special English she uses in her writing, we may not easily understand and accept her ideas. Tan writes about that she has grown up with using different kinds of English: the English she learned in school and she uses in public, and the English she uses in speaking with her mother, which is described as the “broken” English. Moreover it comes to her sense that language is not only a communication tool but also an essential thing in enabling individuals to define their identities.
Amy Tan explores the idea of variable language in her short essay Mother Tongue. Tan is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She grows up watching her parents, especially her mother, struggle with learning the English language. While her mother does gain skill in speaking the English language, she never masters language in the sense that we expect of someone who lives in an English speaking country. As a child, Tan is embarrassed by her mother’s difficulty in language and eventually she sees growing up the child of an Asian immigrant home as the reason she struggled in school to excel in reading and writing.
I cannot give you much more than personal opinions…I am a writer…I am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life…” (Pg.402) Tan frequently used anaphora throughout and many times, “I”, the first person point of view was used. Her sentence fluency varied, with many short and choppy sentences and numerous long and fluent ones. I could relate to “Mother Tongue,” because depending on the situation, the author used different types of “Englishes”. Tan spoke “broken” English with her mother, and a more sophisticated one with other people.
I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language -- the way itcan evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade.And I use them all -- all the Englishes I grew up with.Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use. I was giving a talk to a large groupof people, the same talk I had already given to half a dozen other groups. The nature of the talk was aboutmy writing, my life, and my book, The Joy Luck Club . The talk was going along well enough, until Iremembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong.