Mother tongue reading response Essay Example

people a misunderstanding that Tan’s mother wasn’t smart, couldn’t express her thoughts well. This shows the sociological aspect of language meaning how people judge others by the way they speak. In the story, Tan mentioned the envisioning reader would be her mother. Also the broader audiences would be American with immigrant parents because she illustrated many examples in how her mother was treated. If Asian Americans were her primary audience, there would be a lot of examples related to them.

She defines her “mother tongue” from the way her mother speaks. She helps readers understand her mother’s speech by elaborating on what it is supposed to be said and by giving more information to support why it will be said. The first section talks about the different situations that she would use a different style of English. The second section how her mother’s limited English affects how she is treated and how Tan’s English was restricted. The third section is about how she would write her stories.

She divided the essay like this because it first shows how to use different styles of English in different situation, then shows how people with limited language are treated, last shows the solution of the problem. She classifies these various “Englishes” into native English, and the way her mother speaks English. She winces when she says that because they seem bad to describe a person’s English. These labels makes Tan feels the way her mother is treated is so unfair. The answers to vocabulary questions are depending on the language spoken at home, relative to the way Tan was taught.