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. She comes to see the language barrier between parent and child as the reason other children of Asian immigrants struggle with language academically and as the reason why those children are seen to excel in math and science. Eventually Tan is successful in becoming an accomplished author. Her mother has great pride in her work, despite the barriers between the English her mother speaks and the proper English used by an author. It is in this separation of language that Tan comes to realize that there may not be one proper English.
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
It is evident that Tan’s mother is considered by the society as inferior because of her broken English. Even her daughter was first ashamed of her due to the fact that she cannot speak good English that is understood by many people in the society. However, the significance of “Mother Tongue” in our lives is the overriding theme in the article. From the beginning, Tan struggles with her two different worlds. Being born in China but living in America, she seems ashamed of her roots and that is why she is embarrassed when her mother speaks broken English (Tan 142-146).
The daughters in the stories thought their mothers were very pushy about some things and they did not like it. However, what they did not realize is the intention their mother had for them to be in a better, more independent situation then they were. Jing-Mei Woo was one of the daughters in chapter eight titled Two Kinds and it stated, “I hated the tests, something inside of me began to die”. (Page 141) When Jing-Mei’s mother saw other people excelling, she thought it was necessary for her daughter to do the same thing. She had been put on a pedestal in her mind as a type of prodigy.
Monday February 18, 2013 Essay An Education Problem Author Mary Sherry In the Praise of the F Word The author Mary Sherry is a school teacher and mother who believes in flunking students that are not motivated to master the basic skills in reading, writing and math. She thinks many high school students are cheated by the educational system that graduates them, lacking these basic skills. Also, she feels students should have these basic academic skills before they enter into the real world of college or employment. The author states the lack of not having the basic skills can lead to many social, educational and financial problems later down the road. She understands that people come from different environments and everyone can learn; they just need to be motivated.
Barrientos depicts the hardships and discriminations of the growth of a child coming to America from another country and being forced to speak English and not her native tongue. She knew she was not white like the other children and although she was living the American dream with her family, her parents put her into a position to be English speaking where as they spoke in Spanish to one another but English to the children. As she got older she realized she wanted to be a proud Latina and felt like an outcast from her people because she didn’t speak the language. As her efforts continued she felt discriminated upon by the very people she sought out to teach her. Page 58 she says the registrar called her and her brother, “you people”.
In other words, you could go to these countries and learn their languages, but they can’t really teach you the English language like natives speakers. Also, it is much easier to learn any language for the native speakers. The daily communication with a native speaker will help you automatically to be fluent and master the language easier. For this reason the place plays a very important rule in learning a new language. Moreover, besides the importance of the place, mastering any language learn on the people.
In other words when Tan spoke with proper English she was treated differently opposed to how her mother was treated for speaking her limited English. So what I’m trying to say is sometimes people that speak different languages don’t always get the proper service that they should because of Linguistic Terrorism. I’ve found an example of Linguistic Terrorism online: A recent case in which a Hispanic man lost custody of his only daughter because he tried to teach her Spanish against the wishes of his Anglo wife. He lost the case- not because he was an abusive father, not because he was neglectful, but because he tried to teach his daughter more about her culture and the language of her relatives and ancestors. Where is the freedom of speech there?
Both of these writers were molded by their mothers. Each expresses how wonderful their mother really was, contrary to what the outside world may have thought. Tan expressed her feelings by talking about test and comparing English and math and how the language in the family could have affected how she did on test. Tan makes it understandable by letting the audience know that standard tests cannot determine a person's intelligence, she is trying to say how people have different ways of thinking and different types of intelligence, and yet these standard tests only can measure a certain type of intelligence, so it is unfair. The language barrier each had to overcome often
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.