Mother Tongue By Amy Tan

(Date) “Mother Tongue” Response Essay In the essay “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan emphasizes the idea that the language we are taught in childhood plays an important role in our lives. She writes about the profound effect language has on her life and how she is inspired by her mother’s “impeccable broken English” to become a writer (317). Tan describes her mother as an educated person who can read sophisticated and technical literature written in English with ease. However, Tan’s mother is often

Despite growing up amidst a language deemed as “broken” and “fractured”, Amy Tan’s love for language allowed her to embrace the variations of English that surrounded her. In her short essay “Mother Tongue”, Tan discusses the internal conflict she had with the English learned from her mother to that of the English in her education. Sharing her experiences as an adolescent posing to be her mother for respect, Tan develops a frustration at the difficulty of not being taken seriously due to one’s inability

“Mother tongue” is a very emotional essay, in which Amy Tan describes how as a writer, she discovers the different ways in which she uses the English language to express herself. Moreover, Amy Tan discusses the different purposes of language, and concludes that in many cases people measure human value according to the form in which one convey ideas and thoughts. One day, when giving a speech about one of her books, Tan senses that she is not using the same form of English she uses at home. The presence

In Amy Tan’s essay “Mother Tongue,” it is obvious that language plays an enormous role in our life. Language can influence and give us an insight into another culture different from our own. Amy Tan discusses the many ways in which the language she was taught and native to was important and powerful throughout her life. Language can be defined in various forms, but I hold and acknowledge Amy Tan’s explanation: “Language can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.” I can

spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language-the way it can 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.” -Amy Tan, Mother Tongue Language is what allows humans to be creative. Creative in the way we express ourselves, creative in the way we put our ideas forward, creative in the way we correspond

language is a difficult and demanding task. In “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan expresses the limitations caused by the use of imperfect English in society and her struggles to revitalize it into her life and her writing. Through the use of several rhetorical strategies such as expanding on her own credibility with the use of ethos, appealing to the audience’s emotions using pathos, stating statistics using logos and providing an example of repetition, Tan successfully manages to prove her point on the struggle

In “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan describes the several different kinds of English her that she speaks. It is an interesting concept to think about the fact that more than one variation of a single language exist. After reading “Mother Tongue” I began looking at my own life and seeing if I could recognize the different variation of English that I have come in contact with. After some serious thought, I realized that I have not only come into contact with many different kinds of English, but I speak many

In Amy Tan’s, “Mother Tongue”, Amy has to take all of her mother’s calls because she speaks “…perfect English…”, on the contrary, to her mother speaking “…’broken’ or ‘fractured’ English” (Tan 453). Amy Tan’s mother is the perfect example of an immigrant expected to speak English, and unable to speak it eloquently, or at least to the caliber of being understood

Analysis of "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan In the narrative essay, “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, the author sets out the story between her mother, whose English is her second language, and Tan herself can speak native English very well. The essay covers the tonal shift of Amy Tan 's psychological change, from grudge to understanding. Although she begins the essay saying, " I am not a scholar of English or literature. I cannot give you much more than personal opinions on the

The article "Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan is insightful because she shares the struggles of growing up as a bilingual Asian-American, where in her home English wasn't the primary language. She expresses the challenges she faces in her life growing up hearing her mother using broken English. Amy Tan can speak fluent English she proves this by starting off her writing by explaining the first time her mother heard her speaking in the English she doesn’t use at home(Amy Tan, 20 ). She grew up using the