The Ideas of Language Learning in "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan

In the story entitled “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, she explains about the knowledge and awareness of the social and cultural differences in “broken English” linked to Standard English. She loves writing and she wants to share about how language can influence her life until now. Nevertheless, this story that she shares about tells the readers about how her background impacts her life, education and how she embraces it. In the story, she develops her desire to become a writer through spending time with her mother who speaks broken English. On the other hand, when she is giving a talk to the large group about her book “Joy Luck Club”, she discovers herself that she delivers the message with complex English words. While her mother is there to listen to her about her book, but then she is worried that her mother cannot understand what she talks. She realizes that she is immovable between two worlds which she has to speak in two dimensions between her mother’s world and her friends. Even though she tells the readers that a lot of her friends find it difficult to understand her mother speaking, but for herself, she does not find it hard to communicate and understand her mother because she used the language of her childhood that is simple English.

“Mother tongue” is our first language, that is a very beautiful present from your parent. It is not the origin of your nationality but also the last land to nourish the culture. With the captivating and humorous way of writing Amy Tan, a famous writer, has been written about her personal story about two different version English that she uses. She has given a very deep look into the difference in the same language – English and the struggles that come along with it. Mother Tongue is an essay writing about learning another language by the “mother tongue” way. Although we have our first language, I agreed that by having bilingual languages, we were able to develop our language skills and gain more knowledge, nonetheless in my opinion it can increase the opportunity.

Bilingualism has positive effects in several things such as developing our second language skills, brain and education. Additionally, we all know that English is the primary spoken language in the world. There are a lot of countries use English as an official language. From my experience, since I am an International student my second language would be English. When I came to America, I knew that this is a great chance for me to develop my second language skills. In addition, we can use English to communicate with other people wherever they come from. For instance, I met a lot of new friends from various countries and it made me realized that the only way we can communicate was through English. According to Amy Tan: “Sociologists and linguists probably will tell you that a person’s developing languages skills are more influenced by peers”. Nevertheless, English has enlarged my brain capability to easily more understood, influenced other people and improved my education process in the university. Developing my language skill is one of the advantages in my skills, brain and education.

The more language you know, the more knowledge you get. I agree with the fact that bilingual is more knowledgeable, as it made me more open minded as well. Amy Tan has been using the complex sentence to speak with other people when her mother there which was made her mother wasn’t heard before. While at home, she always uses choppy English to communicate with her family specially her mom, she never uses a proper English to talk. In this case I have kind of the same experience with Amy Tan, as an international student, my English skills is very poor, and it is very hard for me to start a conversation. Nonetheless, I am still trying my best and really working hard to learn English as well as to earn more knowledge. Besides, a little background of me when I was in Viet Nam, I had to take an English class which is required for every student. But the English that I learned was British in grammar and with a Vietnamese accent in speaking. I got confused when I came to the United States, because it was not the same as what I have been studied for. Meanwhile, I learned new things and I enjoyed to learned more about English as my second language.

Being bilingual surely can releases a lot of opportunity in social, career, and life aspects. Provided that, being bilingual can easily increase the opportunity to meet new people and make more friends. Being open socially can lead me to another great opportunity of getting connections especially for our career in the future. Having the chance to learn a new language can give me the opportunity to acquire other culture in the world. According to Amy Tan, “Fortunately, I happen to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions made about me. I became an English major my first year in college, after being enrolled as pre-med”. By means that, I acknowledge everything that she can persuade in the future through her education and social life. As we can see from the story she was very intelligent and smart to impose the objective of her mind fullness knowledge.

In conclusion, from the story of Amy Tan, we can conclude that she maintains and develops languages skills bravely to comprehend the two worlds between her mother and her friend in her surroundings. Other than that, she was gaining so much knowledge about languages and experience from her education. Mean a while she has a lot of opportunities to start and enlarge her career as a writer. Based on her story we can learn from her intelligent of getting to know more about other languages to keep our global in the successful future world.