In her story "Mother Tongue," Amy Tan describes her relationship with her mother, who speaks "broken"

English. Essentially, Amy ending up changing her style of writing because of her mother, who changed Amy's perception of language. In the beginning of her life, Amy was always ashamed and embarrassed because of her mother; her mother, in speaking broken English, would often sound weird and not be understood by people in every day affairs. As an attempt to get away from this side of her heritage, Amy-once she becomes a writer--writes with great English and diction, and she uses a plethora of vocabulary. However, she soon realizes that she is being someone she is not; Amy eventually fully realizes her true relationship with her mother, and subsequently allows that newfound knowledge to affect her writing. Their relationship is one of wonderful love and comfort, one where they can speak broken English ("mother tongue") and have it mean something very special. Essentially, Amy Tan becomes authentic and true to her roots; inspired by her mother, she begins to right so that the 'common man' can understand her

2: The summary of this short novel can sound like that: Amy Tan is a daughter of a Chinese emigrant, whose dream was coming to America, to escape the poverty and provide a better life for her daughter. The daughter, Amy Tan, becomes a writer, and now shes describing her relation with her roots and heritage, through the language shes speaking now, which is English. As a writer, the language is the creative tool. So, the way shes using the language is fundamental. Shes sharing with us her story, how she gets to use the language in the way she is, and how her mothers did imperfect English affected her. The story is very meaningful and very universal, in my opinion. Because is not just about the language itself, but also about relationship with parents, with the cultural background and heritage. It is about leaving your home country and living abroad, and how to still keep the roots. It is about changing, but keeping, at the same time. It is about struggling and confrontation with a hostile (sometimes) environment. It is also about the generation gap, about being ashamed, at some point, of your parents, because they arent good enough for your status or image. And all those meanings might apply for so many of us. You dont necessarily have to leave your country to experiment those feelings! Its enough just to grow professionally and change the way of life! Suddenly, your parents house seems small and ugly, they dont seem as smart as you thought they were supposed to be, they can get less and less of what you are saying, even if you are speaking the same mother language as they always did. This story is about losing and getting back, in the end. It is about coming home, in a way, after a long absence, and being proud again of what you are and what your heritage is. At first, when she was a child, Amy Tan was ashamed that her friends couldnt understand what her mother was saying. She felt bad also because they said her English is broken, as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed. She tended to believe at that time, as everybody else around, that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say. Because, to express something in a wrong or imperfect way, you must be wrong (imperfect and limited) in your thoughts! Her mother also teaches her to think in a different manner than the other children in school. This was the reason why she couldnt react the same way to achievement tests! She grew up with the strong believe (suggested also by the teachers) that Asian students would be much better into engineering, accounting or anything else than an English based profession. Only later, she discovers the richness inside that different system of thinking. Fortunately, because she happens to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions, she starts not only to focus her study into English, but also began to write. And that was the moment she realized how important and meaningful was the fact she was actually able to use different kinds of English language,

and start to appreciate her mother heritage for its real potential. This is the reason she starts writing about her mother: I wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech, and the nature of her thoughts. And she became so much aware about that richness her mother actually gave her, that she decided her first reader and critic should be the mother itself. As she is mentioning in the end of the story: I knew I had succeeded where it counted when my mother finished reading my book and gave me her verdict: so easy to read. I believe that each of us was Amy Tan, in some point his life. We do carry a hidden treasure inside of us, and sometimes we need to be far away from home, or to be separated from our roots somehow, in order to realize and appreciate what we really have.

3: Mother Tongue- -Amy Tan One rhetorical device Tan used was asyndeton. An example of that on page 403, grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, all the forms of standard English that I learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother. Another example, her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech, and the nature of her thoughts. There were many words in the sentence with frequent comma usage and no intervening conjunctions. In the authors essay, many parts consisted of repeating the same word(s) in the beginning of sentences or clauses, which is the definition of anaphora. I am not a scholar of English or literature. I cannot give you much more than personal opinionsI am a writerI am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life (Pg.402) Tan frequently used anaphora throughout and many times, I, the first person point of view was used. Her sentence fluency varied, with many short and choppy sentences and numerous long and fluent ones. I could relate to Mother Tongue, because depending on the situation, the author used different types of Englishes. Tan spoke broken English with her mother, and a more sophisticated one with other people. I also sometimes speak broken English with some of my family (more with my grandmother and infamous uncle). Like the author, I dont like the term broken, because I dont see it as something needed to be fixed. I actually prefer the term, Spanish, because of the way I usually mix English with some Spanish words so they can understand my thoughts to a better extent, but that is just me. Tan did an excellent job of describing societys perception of people with accents, because I also notice it when Im with some of my family. the hospital did not apologize when they said they had lost the CAT scan She said they would not give her any more information until next time So she said she would not leave until the doctor called her daughterAnd when the doctor finally called her daughter, me, who spoke in perfect English-lo and behold-we had assurances the CAT scan would be found Tans tone seemed to be on the sarcastic side while describing her mother being discriminated for not speaking properly. She gave me a superb example of how most Americans infer that information from people who dont speak English fluently is of less quality than people who do. Overall, Tan excelled in using rhetorical devices. There was a good variety of sentence fluency, there was logical tone, and superior word choice was present. I like the fact that she noticed how people who speak

proper English may look down on people who dont. Her essay was witty, realistic, and had many interesting points which I agreed with, even before I read it.