Amy Tan Comparison

Improved Essays
Assignment 3 Comparison
Although Richard Rodriguez and Amy Tan both had a distinct perception of the importance of their intimate family language, they both had the same similarities of facing the struggles they perceived society required of them which was learning the English language. Both Tan and Rodriguez faced these struggles at different points of their lives and had to manage whether they would let the English language conflict with their family’s language. They are fighting to identify whom they want to be in society and whether they want to maintain their roots and language of their culture or adapt to where they now reside. Aside from their differences the similarities they both shared with each other was significant due to them being in the same position and deciding whether they wanted to
…show more content…
One of the main similarities like I said was how they had both discovered the intimacy of their family language at different times of their lives. Amy Tan’s recalls one day when her mother was in the audience she noticed how Amy depending on the circumstance she was in she would switch up her English language. In Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” she said “all the forms of standard English that I had learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother”(pg.1). At that moment she realized that she had a whole other language that was personal and only used around her mother. As she called it a form of “Broken English” she would mix up words and phrases differently in a form that her mother would understand her and use the Formal English language

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Se Habla Espan᷉ol and Mother Tongue Tanya Maria Barrientos and Amy Tan are similar but also contain some key differences. Barrientos and Tan are children of immigrants that are ashamed of their families heritage. Although Barrientos and Tan were raised within different cultures, they are both ashamed of where they came from. As Barrientos says, “I wanted to call myself Latino, to finally take pride, but it felt like a lie” (631).…

    • 724 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Aria” by Richard Rodriguez is an essay that shows the readers a part of life that many have never experienced. Rodriguez uses this essay to show how he fights through his childhood tounderstand English. He faces society while forfeiting his happy home life trying to become a typical English-speaking student. He establishes a connection with the audience through his personal experience as a child. He uses imagery and narration to clarify his opposition to bilingual education .Rodriguez…

    • 758 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The United States has rapidly conformed into a multiracial society. Bilingual individuals come to America in hopes to find equal rights and freedom and face discrimination by Americans. American values are forced upon these people and according to Tan and Anzaldua, a certain way of life is expected of them. The struggle of “fitting in” and accepting the cultural background is a major point in both essays, Mother Tongue by Amy Tan and How to Tame a Wild Tongue by Gloria Anzaldua. Their experiences with the discrimination in the United States have given them they reason to stand against social inequality.…

    • 840 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It gave her uncomfortable feelings and forced her to blush if her mother was speaking. Only when she got older she realized her own mistake – judging by the way the person talks, instead of the way he or she thinks. It made Amy Tan perceive that her own “perfect English”, which she used to implement in her early writing, does not stand a chance and that it is boring and useless. She decided to write in the simple, the “most full” language, so people like her mother would understand it. Her mother and her “broken English” created the writer with a unique style of presentation.…

    • 808 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rodriguez describes growing further from his family when he began to take on more and more speaking of the public language. He became more intimate with friends who spoke English as well and begins to realize the intimacy his family and family friends have with one another can’t be accomplished between them and English speakers. Even as his own siblings begin to adopt more of the public language, he becomes aware of the fact that, similar to himself, the…

    • 1405 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Assignment 7-1 Analysis

    • 1610 Words
    • 7 Pages

    completed assignment 7-1 Reading: Revision Strategies completed assignment 7-2 Small Group Discussion: Implementing Multiple Revision Strategies (GRADED) completed assignment 7-3 Activity: Revision Process (GRADED) Activity: Revision Process (GRADED) NOTE: This activity will be graded based on completion. contemplating revisions…

    • 1610 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As the essay progresses, Tan learns to accept her mother’s broken english and uses it as inspiration for her writings.…

    • 927 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Aria Rodriguez Thesis

    • 948 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Rodriguez’s essay, Aria, shares his experience of growing up bilingual, and what it was like to go to an American school after speaking only Spanish for his entire life. He wanted people to understand and connect to his life story, which I did because I also grew up bilingual. I wanted to share the transition I went through from my elementary school years, which was tough, to my life right now because both experiences are interconnected. Both Rodriguez and I used antithesis, first person pronouns, and diction to convey the struggle that our younger selves went through and how it connects to our current perception of school and society.…

    • 948 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The existing conflict with language is to not only about English itself, but also about the relationship between Tan and her mother. It is crucial to understand that Tan’s original mentality was that her mother’s “English reflected the quality of what she had to say (...) and because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect.” More importantly, the voice used in the essay reflects Tan’s own opinions on English, so shifts to a softer tone and enhanced…

    • 622 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Amy Tan Ethos Pathos Logos

    • 1040 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Her mother feels as if she’s limited to what she can say because people might not comprehend her English. Amy Tan used rhetorical strategies such as pathos, logos, and ethos to write a passage from her own personal experiences. She talked about how people called her mother’s English “broken” and just how much that bothered her to hear that word. As well as “limited english”. Amy spoke “proper” english because of the English they taught her in school.…

    • 1040 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Mother Tongue, Amy Tan suggests that her mother has shaped her definition of language. Thus language helps Tan to connect with her mother. She points out that the way her mother raises her and has influenced her English and her career. Tan writes: ”The language that helped shaped the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world” (Tan 179).…

    • 919 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rhetorical Arrangement of "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan Amy Tan, in her narrative novel - "Mother Tongue", recounts her thoughts of her mother 's "broken English". Tan 's purpose is to explicitly express the influences on her life exerted by "Mother Tongue", in order to attract readers with similar feelings and experience. She employs delicate rhetorical arrangements such as classification order, narrative anecdotes, and comparison. These delicate rhetorical arrangements are effectively beneficial to Tan 's purpose of writing this short novel.…

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “Broken” English negatively impacts immigrants on a daily basis. A great example of this negative impact is shown through “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan. Tan’s parents fled from China in the 1940’s with many other people because of China’s Cultural Revolution and when they came to America, they had trouble assimilating with Americans. Tan, on the other hand, had a less difficult time adapting to the American Culture because she was born in America. In Mother Tongue, Tan begins the passage by explaining how powerful language is and then continues on to tell stories that help prove her point.…

    • 1226 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the article, Mother Tongue, the author Amy Tan explicitly demonstrates how she has developed her perspectives about language and the way of thinking under the influence of her mother’s limited English skill. The strategies Tan used to support her argument include vivid anecdote, striking contrast, and emotionally appealing parallelism. This journal is going to analyse how those rhetorical devices were being used during the delivery of Tan’s stories, and present my connections with her. At the beginning, Tan employed several sharp contrasts and vivid anecdotes to help her audience interpret her feeling of her mother tongue.…

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Richard Rodriguez believes that the Americanization of a bilingual child will result in their public gain. “Aria” by Richard Rodriguez is a heart-wrenching piece of writing about the full Americanization of Rodriguez resulting in his native language of Spanish being forgotten and the full submersion into the English language. Many of the events Rodriguez faced in his life are present to many other bilingual students’ today. These events that bilingual students’ are facing will strongly influence their decision on struggling to learn two languages at a young age, stalling the development of one of their languages, or being forced to choose one language or the other in a full assimilation. Rodriguez’s viewpoint is that if you want to make a full…

    • 1373 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays