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Essay on importance of mother tongue in education
Cultural or linguistic diversity
Essay on importance of mother tongue in education
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Hong Kong is one of the most powerful international financial and cultural centres in the world. Due to its great cultural diversity, Hong Kong is considered to be the place “where east meets west”. Between 1841 and 1997 The Great Britain had control over the region. In present, it is officially referred as special administrative region (SAR) of People’s Republic of China. History of Hong Kong indicates that this place had the English as a medium of instruction until 1997, however, afterwards, Hong Kong people started to teach in mother tongue, Cantonese. This report is going to outline the usage and importance of mother tongue at all schools while giving some disadvantages that may occur.
As already mentioned, Hong Kong used to be the English
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According to Pattanayak [10], mother language is an essential component of every culture and fundamental of multicultural or intercultural education. Daniel [11] stated that, language and national identity have strong links with each other. It is believed that a language is a crucial tool when one is learning his past, his present life, his future direction, his personality and expressing himself. Because the first condition of being a nation is to speak the same language. American writer Brown [12] believes that, language is the road map of a culture. It tells where its people come from and where they are going.
Mother tongue can be essential, but no one can underestimate the usage of English in today’s world, which is the main language of international knowledge. Knowing only native language can affect students’ international knowledge negatively. For instance, it would be hard for them to understand news or articles available at different international sources. Technology is also the essential part of today’s society, where software of most of the programmes is in English [13]. According to Carol [13], English is and will be the crucial language in technology because it is widely spoken by people around the
In the course of reading two separate texts it is generally possible to connect the two readings even if they do not necessarily seem to be trying to convey the same message. The two articles, “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, and “Coming Into Language” by Jimmy Santiago Baca, do have some very notable similarities. They are two articles from a section in a compilation about the construction of language. The fact that these two articles were put into this section makes it obvious that they will have some sort of connection. This essay will first summarize the two articles and break them down so that they are easily comparable; also, this essay will compare the two articles and note similarities and differences the texts may have.
Language can defined the type of person you become and it has an influence on our choices as well as lifestyle. Language itself has become a way of seeing life in a different perspectives. Tan discusses the many ways in which language has played a role in her life and the result from it. I can relate to Tan’s experience to some extent because I come from a bilingual household too. Just like Tan, I am one of my mother’s main source of communication with people who don’t speak spanish. I believe the notion of Tan’s “Mother Tongue” is stating that just because someone who cannot speak the English language perfectly, is considered less intelligent to many compared to those who can understand and speaks it fluently. But what makes us all unique is that it is rare to find two or more people who speak the same exact English. Even though both Tan and I helped our parent and come from different ethnic backgrounds; Tan came from a Chinese family while I came from a Hispanic family. We both share similar ideas about the language spoken in our household, and it was also a big challenge for both of us while we were being raised by an immigrant parent who spoke only “limited English”(Tan
Language is an important part of who we are. It influences the way we think and behave on a great scale. However, sometimes it is forced upon us to go in different directions just so we can physically and mentally feel as if we belong to the society in which we live in. Just as we see in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez’s “A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, both authors faced some challenges along the way by coping with two different languages, while still trying to achieve the social position which they desired.
Most people who grow up with a foreign language spoken in there house grow up with an advantage in society. This advantage can only occur once the individual learning that foreign language also learns the dominant language spoken in that country. Once both of these languages are learned and mastered, the individual has now placed them se...
“Mother Tongue” is an essay that show the power of language and how Amy Tan uses the many forms of English and the different ways in which the language she knew impacted her life. I feel connected to Tan’s essay because I also come from a multilingual home. I have smart emigrant parents who are educated, but even though they are educated they still need my help with communicating with people occasionally. I believe the most important idea in Tan’s “Mother Tongue” is the limitation that an imperfect English can cause in a society and the richness that such English can bring to
Language is a means of communication and it varies from one community to another. Everyone has a mother tongue which depended on the family’s upbringing. A second language can be learned along the way. There are also instances where a person is born in a community that speaks two languages and therefore, had to learn both languages. The quality of the languages learned will be affected by how well the community speaks both languages. This can later develop into a new form of language. The essay describes the frustration of the author who felt rejected by different groups for speaking a different form of language. Her essay aims to gain sympathy from readers by seeing the issue from her point of view. Anzaldua attempts to achieve this in her essay by raising issues on identity and discrimination. She wanted to highlight that language is not determined by a country’s physical borders.
In the essay “Mother Tongue” Amy Tan, the author, gives a different, a more upbeat outlook on the various forms of English that immigrants speak as they adapt to the American culture. Using simple language to develop her argument, she casually communicates to the audience rather than informing which helps the audience understand what is being presented at ease. Her mother plays an important role in her outlook of language, because she helps her realize that language not only allows one to be a part of a culture but create one’s identity in society. Amy Tan shares her real life stories about cultural racism and the struggle to survive in America as an immigrant without showing any emotions, which is a wonderful epiphany for the audience in realizing
Teaching world languages is a very specific, extensive field, and it should be noted that the texts presented here are only a small sample of what is available. Though it has long been known that language, culture and identity are interwoven, and extensive research to this effect has been presented, there exists an enduring trend to teach language solely as language. The texts presented within this annotated bibliography make it obvious that, as language is the main conveyer of culture, opportunities are being missed to help students develop their cultural understanding, and thus, their own identities, through the acquisition of second, or subsequent, languages.
The purpose of Amy Tan’s essay, “Mother Tongue,” is to show how challenging it can be if an individual is raised by a parent who speaks “limited English” (36) as Tan’s mother does, partially because it can result in people being judged poorly by others. As Tan’s primary care giver, her mother was a significant part of her childhood, and she has a strong influence over Tan’s writing style. Being raised by her mother taught her that one’s perception of the world is heavily based upon the language spoken at home. Alternately, people’s perceptions of one another are based largely on the language used.
Life is tough when one doesn’t speak the native language or is new to a country. “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan is written in a first person point of view that tells the audience a story of a non-English speaker.Tan states the difficulty for her mother to communicate with another because people disrespect her mother. The presupposition that people treat one differently or without respect when one doesn’t speak English is a categorical truth. Tan’s purpose is to share her story and give the audience the message of how tough life is for non-English speaker, and that one has to work hard to achieve success, therefore non-English speaker deserve the same respect as other people.
These ideas are also well shown throughtout the short essay “Mother’s Tongue” by Amy Tan. In “Mother’s Tongue” Amy’s mother deals with identity contingencies of being Asian, she also faces the pressue of sterotype threat. Finally, Amy’s mother deals with the stigma of her language speaking. These two piecies of writing deal with
Amy Tan’s short story called “Mother Tongue”, reminded me of my personal life experience, that I'm going through right now, this short story made me start to read the whole book of “Mother Tongue “, because I think in Tan’s book we have similar thoughts about the power of language. People’s do not take seriously the person’s problem who is with broken language. Also, everybody has their own mother tongue that they grow up with. In addition, parents with no perfect English has effects of their kids life.
In Amy Tan’s essay, “Mother Tongue”, she uses anecdotes and selection of details to convey her empathy and respect towards her mother’s language and identity. As a Chinese immigrant, Amy Tan’s mother experiences language barriers in her everyday life. Overcoming these obstacles pose challenges for her, as well as Tan. By the use of anecdotes, Tan is able to illustrate to the reader ways in which her mother and she surmount the various barriers between “broken” english and societies. Tan comes to the realization that her use of rhetoric is way past her mother’s comprehension and decides to do something about it. In addition, Tan uses selection of detail to enhance the expression of her empathy and respect towards her mother. Tan realizes the everyday
...xpressing her Chinese culture. Mastering a second language allows her to articulate her and her mother’s thoughts; it is a foundation for her pride and a foundation to express herself. For Gloria Anzaldua, instead of choosing one language over the other, she chose a mix of the two and fights for it. She realized the value of her language when she lost it and now treasures it. The kind of Spanish she speaks is neither English nor Spanish, but both. It is overflowing with culture from Medieval Spain, France, Germany, etc., just from the origins of the words. It is her pride and a representation of herself, fighting and living. In conclusion, in addition to Lera Boroditsky’s article proving that the structure of language affects how we think, the articles by Eric Liu, Amy Tan, and Gloria Anzaldua show how language is a foundation for a person’s culture, pride, and self.
International students may be sent to America to study, speak, write and read in English but the chance of encountering difficulties and struggles is high. According to researchers, learning English in America especially for foreign students is a difficult decision because one may not be able to become accustomed to the environment, behavior of difference culture and the acts of other around. English learners will also encounter reading disability because one cannot read English in a short time; additionally, international students usually struggle with reading English even though one may have the knowledge of the English language. No matter how many disadvantage the English language has, the world most common language will not be extinct because jobs, education and many other parts of the world use English as a primary