Tan falls prey to the prejudicial attitudes around her for many reasons. The first is for acceptance. Tan feels that her mother’s English is a bad reflection upon her. In order for her to be accepted by her peers she has to “fit in” and be respected by them. She accomplishes this by disassociating herself from her mother. Her mother holds a trait that Tan does not want to be known for, broken English. So by giving in to the views others hold, that broken English makes a person unintelligent, she has acceptance from others and they look beyond her mother’s English, because she by holding their viewpoint has not made her mother an issue. Another reason for Tan’s tainted perception of her mother is because she wants to m

Language is supposed to result in communication. Many people put too much focus on the words coming out and not the meaning of them, by doing this they discriminate against those who do not speak the same way and there is a communication breakdown. Experiences in life, the thoughts we have formulated and the feelings within us make us who we are, not the words that come from our mouths. But unfortunately, if we as humans cannot effectively communicate our thoughts and feelings we are looked down upon, even if it is just because of a loss of meaning in the translation from native tongue or even a cultural communication difference, these labels reflect how we view ourselves and how other people perceive us.

ake an image for herself and become as different from her as possible. She has the privilege of being a first generation American and wants to live that dream to the fullest. In order to do that she tries to drop anything that associates her with her “ol!

ing to learn to sign. When I finished my “speech” I remember feeling an overwhelming amount of accomplishment. But when I received a well deserved “A” it wasn’t important to me. I learned something much more than how to form words with my hands that summer.

Sign language is by far the most difficult language to learn but has been the most beneficial to my life. Every morning I would wake up for class and every morning for two hours I would learn to sign the alphabet and word phrases but never really understood the importance of them or how they all fitted together. I began to get frustrated with it until I started to watch my grandfather and father sign back and forth to each other and saw how passionate they were and how their hands smoothly transferred from word to word. I wanted to share that with my grandfather also. But it seemed with everyday the course got more difficult and in my frustration of not being able to sign fast enough I would give up and begin to speak, when I realized something that changed my views forever. Every time my grandfather gets frustrated and begins to speak he is made fun of

Some topics in this essay:
Tan’s Chinese, Mother Tongue, French English, Learned Judging, sign language, broken english, learn sign, Amy Tan, mother’s english, respect mother, store clerk, words mouths, form words, native tongue,