Mother Tongue: Achievement Test English: The State Of Language

There are many things wrong with the world right now and that does not exclude the US, while there are many issues with dealing with an increasingly global society but none of them are as easy to fix and as urgent reforming language education. Although it is important for language to be standardized so that we can all understand each other, the state of language education is holding back non-native and native speakers alike.

The thought that there is only one set, unevolving way to speak is harmful to society. Language has always been a constantly changing idea, new languages would grow and others would die. They would be born, die and evolve with the need of society. It is something we as humans will always have to enable us to communicate

Our languages are not static they are alive and grow and change with us. When one language stops changing it ceases to live. So, through all of this why does modern society try so very hard to make it into an unnatural static state? Amy Tan in Mother Tongue called this state of English as “achievement test English”. Therein lies the central issue, in order to test something it has to be presented as fact, something that cannot change. This causes the dilemma that Tan observed in her text, 2 separate languages both called “English” but both vastly different from one another. You do not have to be a foreigner to see this either, the slang filled language Americans use day to day is not the same that was taught to them. Baldwin in “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” questioned if they would even be considered to be one single language and challenged that there is no one correct way to speak. Language is a product of ones identity and experiences so why do we continue to force that “this” is the right way when someone else made that. Who is to say that what we were just taught were useful or too

It is indisputable that language is a very emotionally change concept it was born from the necessity to express and connect. Having gone through countless school days learning the difference in spelling their, they’re, and there there was one thing that I could not understand, if language was born for talking way before writing and the sole purpose of it was to vocalize a person inner thoughts with those around them then what is the point of having such intricacies in the writing of it? That in itself does not present itself much of an issue until things like these are taught more than how it could be applied to express yourself in everyday life, we are taught by the book and with a very ridged outline. But, language is so much looser and fluid than that it is not meant to be so deprived of emotion and identity. Cummins illustrates this very well in “The effects of bilingualism” by comparing the use of language to a wheel, if you focus on the first and second figures this is very easy to see, a wheel is meant to spin freely with little effort so that it can take to the idea that you are trying to convey through it but try to make language too ridged and it will not spin unless you put huge amounts of effort into it. Cummins take this a step further and adds the concept of speaking two languages at