The Struggle In Mother Tongue By Amy Tan

After re-reading Mother Tongue, and per “about the author”; Amy Tan’s goal is to share a part of her life story as a first generation Asian-American as well as sharing some of the struggles she faced during her educational period. She talks about how she speaks one English with her mother, such as “broken” or “limited” English, and speaks “standard” English with the rest of the world, in which she learned in school. The author’s purpose really did not change much for me, I feel she still refers to the different types of English. As for example and she states: “a speech with carefully wrought grammatical phrase, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, forms of standard English that
• Final key point: Tan discusses about a survey she read about on Asian-American students and how they are more apt to pass in math and science, than they are on English tests.
My audience that will be reading my essay are bilingual college students or college students that faces the challenges as the author did. The potential challenges I may face from the audience are people that cannot relate to this struggle. They may say something like “Why should people go to college if they cannot speak proper English or have “limited” English?” My only counter argument is “why not? would you not think that everyone has the opportunity to learn something new?” or “When you relatives come over to this country, they had to learn ‘proper’ English, and then teach their children and so on.” To be honest, every author faces some sort challenge, there is always going to be negativity in the world. I feel that if we as a whole, try to reach the people that want positivity in their life, those are the people that we would want to focus
I want to spread the word to potential college students, that it is never too late, and to never give up, no matter what anyone says. I grew up in a family with “limited” English, although, I am third generation “mutt” American, there were different types of English in my house. My mother came from a French mother and a German father, and having that mix in the house was difficult at times. I, like Amy Tan was finding myself speaking “broken” English to my mother and “proper” English to everyone else. Occasionally, I would catch myself talking “broken” English like I do with my mother to other people. I would receive looks or people not wanting to talk to me when I talk this way. I felt that, they may think I will not understand them. I believe this is the reason why I can relate to Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue story, and want to show people that it does not matter how people perceive you; it matters how hard you are willing to go the