Question

Read the excerpt from "Mother Tongue." Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother’s English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It’s my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world. How does Tan build a central idea of her story in the excerpt? Tan describes her friends’ understanding of her mother to support the idea that nonstandard forms of English should only be used in the home. Tan uses numerical data to support the idea that nonstandard forms of English are on the decline and being replaced by one standard form. Tan tells a story about her mother’s life to support the idea that learning the language of a new country comes naturally to most people. Tan discusses her mother’s English to support the idea that the language of one’s childhood is a person’s deepest, truest form of expression.

Answer 1

Answer:

Tan discusses her mother’s English to support the idea that the language of one’s childhood is a person’s deepest, truest form of expression.

Explanation:

It's important here to think about how Tan is speaking about her mother's tongue. Is she speaking about it in a positive or negative way? Is she embarrassed or ashamed of her mother's English? Her tone is positive and not embarrassed. Any option that goes against this should be eliminated. She's also not saying anything about learning the English language or how it has developed. She's merely showing that her mother's English is not always easily understood by others, but that she understands it. It is what she grew up with and the way in which she learned the world around her. She says that it "was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world." We learn language from our parents, and in our childhood, it's our parents who taught us how to express ourselves.