Question

Read the excerpt from "Mother Tongue." Those tests were constructed around items like fill-in-the-blank sentence completion, such as “Even though Tom was ______, Mary thought he was _____.” And the correct answer always seemed to be the most bland combinations of thoughts, for example, “Even though Tom was foolish, Mary thought he was ridiculous.” Well, according to my mother, there were very few limitations as to what Tom could have been and what Mary might have thought of him. So I never did well on tests like that. How does Tan build a central idea of her story in the excerpt?

Answer 1

Tan’s mother could think of several ways to answer a question like the one described in the excerpt.

Answer 2

Answer:

Tan gives an example of her experience with achievement tests to support the idea that they are not always accurate measures of language ability.

Explanation:

In this paragraph, Tan tells us about her personal experience with achievement tests. She describes how her mother reacted to these, and how she struggled with them, not due to her ability but due to the nature of the tests. In this way, Tan builds the central idea of her story, which is that these tests are not always accurate measures of language ability.