Response to Mother Tongue

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Mother Tongue Using English as second languages are very common everywhere in most countries now. As an international student, learning how to speak English become necessary. We are force to use English in the right way to can communicate with others in the environment we are living in. In my case, I used to live with my mother in California during high school. We never speak English to each other. Since our first language is mandarin, plus my mother is not really an English speaker, we will only speak mandarin to each other. She will go to adult school for ESL class and learn English skills. However, she will always put single terms into one sentence with non-grammatical way. In the article, I like how Tan said, “I was forced to ask for information.” Even though I don’t have to pretend I am my mother, but I get the feeling that who ever speak better English had the responsibilities to help out the situation. Sometime it is a hard time for me to do this because I may not speak the perfect English like Tan. I will get nervous when the question comes up with many words I don’t know, or I want to say something but there are some terms I don’t know how to translate into English. For example, when I first come to America, I cannot understand the way my classmates talk to me, and there are some people speak very different English. It cost me a long time to get used to speak to different people in school. Sometime there are some word this group use a lot but the other group never uses it or they don’t even know the word. I agree that point she made, “it’s because over twenty years we’ve been together I’ve often used the same kind of language with him.” In my case, I often use English with my friend, even though we both speak the same first language. We can still understand each other in English. Although I am considering as “broken” English, I still think that using

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