Mother Tongue Critical Analysis
The author of The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan, pens "Mother Tongue" concerning the negative judgment that native English speakers have towards individuals who have a basic mastery of English and the comparison to their intelligence. The author uses her mother as an example to convey her point and to discredit those negative perceptions as a way to convince her audience not to judge. This article 's contestation against the negative perceptions that others have towards people with limited English language skills, is a valid claim, but is not effectively defended for it to be persuasive.
The words to describe the type of English her mother, and others who speak like her, are described as "broken", "fractured", or "limited". …show more content…
"She reads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stockbroker, reads Shirley MacLaine 's books with ease" (Tan 21). This piece of evidence supports the author 's goal in view of the fact that the author 's mother educates and informs herself in a language that she has not completely mastered and is her strongest point exemplified through her mother. Although this may be true, the reader cannot believably blanket this example to all non-native speakers. Tan mentions in the third paragraph about the power of language and how it can bring up emotions, images, complex ideas, or truths. One could argue that someone who speaks limited English could not do these abstract concepts and thus could not be considered …show more content…
The author references surveys she looked into regarding Asian-American students that show them excelling in math tests better than English tests to make a point that, despite the students intelligence in numbers, she feels that they are lead away from the language arts due to their lack of command of the English language (Tan 23). The author could have supported her key point in this paragraph better by giving specifics about where she got that information to make it more credible. She states that she was guided away from literature so it may have biased her opinion on the evidence because it happened to her. To make the author 's key point more credible she should include the surveys she noticed on the matter to be able to make a more accurate
The author of The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan, pens "Mother Tongue" concerning the negative judgment that native English speakers have towards individuals who have a basic mastery of English and the comparison to their intelligence. The author uses her mother as an example to convey her point and to discredit those negative perceptions as a way to convince her audience not to judge. This article 's contestation against the negative perceptions that others have towards people with limited English language skills, is a valid claim, but is not effectively defended for it to be persuasive.
The words to describe the type of English her mother, and others who speak like her, are described as "broken", "fractured", or "limited". …show more content…
"She reads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stockbroker, reads Shirley MacLaine 's books with ease" (Tan 21). This piece of evidence supports the author 's goal in view of the fact that the author 's mother educates and informs herself in a language that she has not completely mastered and is her strongest point exemplified through her mother. Although this may be true, the reader cannot believably blanket this example to all non-native speakers. Tan mentions in the third paragraph about the power of language and how it can bring up emotions, images, complex ideas, or truths. One could argue that someone who speaks limited English could not do these abstract concepts and thus could not be considered …show more content…
The author references surveys she looked into regarding Asian-American students that show them excelling in math tests better than English tests to make a point that, despite the students intelligence in numbers, she feels that they are lead away from the language arts due to their lack of command of the English language (Tan 23). The author could have supported her key point in this paragraph better by giving specifics about where she got that information to make it more credible. She states that she was guided away from literature so it may have biased her opinion on the evidence because it happened to her. To make the author 's key point more credible she should include the surveys she noticed on the matter to be able to make a more accurate