RRJ: Mother Tongue by Amy Tan

Summary
Mother Tongue is an essay written by Amy Tan wherein she talks about all
the different kind of Englishes she had to deal with in her life. She explains
how she had to switch English when she was talking with her mother and when
she was speaking at school. Also, she describes how she had to translate her
mothers broken English in order to help her to be understand by others
people. Amy Tan gives us an analysis of how a mother languages can affect a
child. For example, she tells us that her mothers English used to affect her in
her early academic life because she was not familiar with as much rules in her
speaking English. She finally concludes in showing the positive impact that her
experience with her mother had on her and on her writing.

Response
I think its a touching story because Amy Tan describes pretty well the
relationship existing between a mother and her child. Usually, we know that they
are bound by the blood relationship and by feelings but we dont know that it
also exist this kind of relationship. I like the fact that Amy Tans cared about
her mothers English. She used to judge her as everybody judge this broken
English, but then she realized that there was nothing stupid in this way of
speaking, and thus, she even decided to write in using what she got from her
mother. Here is something that I would probably also do toward my mother.

Discussion questions
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Why did Amy decide to write in using all of this different Englishes?
Do you really think that the English used by Amys mother affected her in
her way of thinking?

Reading process

Honestly, I didnt really use any reading process because the reading was pretty
easy. Usually, if I dont understand a word, I just try to understand from the
context.

Good words
bland: I still understood the sentence because it was not an important word to
understand the meaning of the sentence.
quandary and nascent: I still dont understand those words but its ok
because they take place when she quoted a sentence that she was saying in
proper English. Since it was only an example to show how perfect was her
english, if I already understand what was the purpose of the example, I dont
need to understand the meaning of this sentence.

GOULOBA Gwenaelle, ESL 33B