Mother Tongue College Essays Samples For Students

The story by Amy Tan and that by Jasmin Darznikboth talk about languages. For this reason, they come in handy in helping deduce the importance of language to an individual. Language is one very vital tool for the purposes of communication. According to Amy Tan, language is a way in which one can understand another person. Conversely, every living being has a language that he or she understands clearly. From the point of birth, human beings begin learning a particular language. The language learnt at the time of birth is the language that the person’s guardians speak. This is the mother ...

Introduction

Language is an important aspect of human beings that helps in shaping the identity of an individual or a certain group of people. People from a particular region or community are able to identify persons from another different community based on the uniqueness of their language dialect or accent. When a person speaks their mother tongue, other people can easily know the specific nationality or cultural background. They are therefore able to identify them as different. This way, language shapes a person’s or community’s identity, especially where people are interacting in a mainstream culture and/or a standard language. It is important to discuss ...

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However being hidden among the abundant and eloquent metaphors, the poet raises in the poem a wide range of issues. It may be noticed that according to the certain topics raised the mood of the poems gradually changes, too: firstly, the poet provides the flashbacks to the early childhood and praises mother tongue, depicting it as “a tender flower with lots of fragrances”, “an ornament for dignity and beauty of people”, “a playground for their incessant aspirations” (Laoti 1). The tone then changes when he illustrates the existence without a mother tongue: “Neither heart neither leaps up ...

Education is the foundation of the well-being and success in an individual’s life. The educational institutions have the responsible on their shoulders to provide the best ambiance and facilities for every student, so that he or she is able to learn the academic lessons in the best possible way. It is the onus of the academicians and authorities to find the right mode of communicative techniques that would reach out to the students with full impetus. As such, with the globalization of education- something that includes classes with students from different communities, the challenge of teaching the lessons ...

Economic Situation of Immigrants in Canada

This paper talks about the migration of immigrants into Canada and the resultant labor environment for the immigrants. It brings together and reviews several recent studies conducted on the subject of immigrants into Canada and how they have fared in the labor market as compared to the native-born candidates. This paper shall argue that recent immigrants into the country face less prospects of getting gainful employment, and in the event that they obtain such employment, they are faced with low incomes that pose challenges for their survival. This paper will further argue that the economic impact caused by this ...

I was fourteen when I first heard of the “F” word. I was walking down the street to a friend’s house when a man standing by the corner suddenly said it to my face. This happened in the UK where I was taking up an English course. I did not know what the word meant, but by his facial expression I knew that it was nothing good. At this time, I was just starting to learn English, and the word did not appear in the textbooks. ...

Psychology: Nature vs. Nurture Essay

Language constitutes an essential characteristic of human beings and is regarded as a primary form of communication between individuals. The role of nature and nurture in language acquisition among young children has been a continuous debate in developmental sciences, education, and social sciences like sociology and psychology. This issue is not only conflicting but also complementary. It has laid a foundation for better understanding of how biological and environmental factors interact to influence language development in children (Yusa et al. 2011). Available research shows that there is no clear pattern of the causes and effects associated with human cognition ...

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Comparison & Contrast
The obvious similarity between, Mary Mebane's "The back of the bus," and Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue", is the theme of the problems faced by the racial minority and their plight in America. However if we dwell deep we find that, both the authors have stressed upon the different aspects of this problem, and have taken a different approach in highlighting the sociological implications of racism/ethnicity.
While Mary Mebane has talked about lack of equal status (both legal/social) for American Blacks during the era in which she grew up, Amy Tan’s essay deals with the way ...

English is the only global language and other languages cannot compete with it. This means many languages will die out as a result. Is this a good or bad thing?
Language is the main part of communication between different people. People from one culture, community can communicate only if they know each other’s language. Everyone has their mother tongue, and their national language. But there are few languages that are spoken and understood worldwide. Among these few, English is the one spoken, understood, learnt and written globally. Almost all countries of the world have acknowledged this fact that to ...

Introduction

Language is a channel through which people communicate with each other. It is of utmost importance for a child’s development as it enables a child to gather information, process it and create conceptual images in his or her mind. Verbal communication enables a child to comprehend the world around and learn from it. Thus, language is an integral part of both, the formal and informal education systems. There is an increasing focus on enabling children to learn more than one language in the United States (King and Fogle 1). Bilingualism is the capability to communicate in two languages with almost equal proficiency. ...

Canadian French nationalism is a complex issue that has its roots in the settlement of the country by French explorers. It has been a highly emotional issue that has affected the politics of Canada over the years. The eye of the storm is the province of Quebec where 81% of its people spoke French as opposed to the 90% of Canadians who spoke English in the rest of Canada during the early stages of the secessionist movement (Fenwick, 1981). The current Separatist movement has lost power and is no longer the threat to Canadian political and social stability it ...

The media exists as a particularly invasive as well as informative source of stereotyping that in an attempt to remain objective allows the subjectivity of others to give way to over-generalized beliefs of other cultures. While many feel it necessary to blame the various media sources that feed the fires of stereotyping the media is meant only as the vessel and nothing else. This belief however has been altered throughout the years as the beliefs and practices of several cultures have been categorized and rudely stuffed into the stereotypes that society has forced upon them. A perfect example of ...

Amy Tan writes speaks to the ways in which the culture, traditions and the language differ across regions. The narrator in the story shares similar experiences as Tan’s mother was also an immigrant who migrated from China. But there is conflict between the two as the daughter is less receptive to embracing the idea that her mother has for her and her assimilation into a new culture. The truth is that the narrator’s mother represents the typical mother in the society who wishes that her child will get the best of everything that life has to offer. ...

“I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s “limited” English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality if what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect. And I have plenty of empirical evidence to support me: the fact that people in department stores at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did ...

English is the Main Language of Work in Modern Society

Introduction
Language plays a crucial role in workplace communication between employees. Since globalization has turned the world into a melting pot of various cultures and ethnicities, it has become a regular affair for people of different national identities to work together in harmony. In order to maintain a harmonious relationship in the workplace, language plays an important role. Lately, the technical advancements have closed the geographical gap between nations and have turned English into a lingua franca used by people not only in their day to day communication, but also in the workplace. The term "workplace English" refers to the professional interaction, business ...

In Mother Tongue, Amy Tan explains three simultaneous aspects and types of Englishes, which she believes are commonly spoken or used in different cultures. She explains these Englishes to include the “simple English,” which she claims that she spoke to her mother; the “broken English,” which her mother used with her; the “Watered down English,” which represents her translation of her mother’s Chinese. The author also includes in her essay the English she imagines to be her mother’s translation of Chinese if her mother could speak perfect English. This essay has something magical about it because of ...

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Introduction
“There is an eternal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives” –Josephine Hart. The famous quote by bestseller novelist is absolutely true and this could be understood well by travelers who are adventurous. For explorers, geography is the landscape that extends up to the horizon and well even beyond it. According to Bonnett (2008), “More specifically, it is towards geography that people have turned when seeking answers to the questions, ‘How and why has the environment altered?” (p.4). Mapping is a popular activity with which people tend to associate geography more specifically ...

One of the hallmark characteristics of our modern world is multiculturalism. As Bill Bryson points out in his book, The Mother Tongue, “If you drew a map of Europe based on languages, it would bear scant resemblance to a conventional map” (Bryson, 1990). Most countries of the world are pluralistic. With notable exceptions, such as homogenous Iceland, most countries are composed of multiple linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This has been, and continues to be an ongoing source of conflict in our world and nations. Since every culture has it’s own unique traditions, understandings, values and language, there is not a mechanism ...

Summary

In the essay entitled Mother Tongue, by Amy Tan, the author portrays how hard it is for the Asian Americans to persist through the difficulties of coping with English language. In the essay mentioned herein, Amy presents the many languages of English she learns and uses while striving to understand English language. Additionally, she further presents how learning English is a problem subsequent to the fact that English is not her best subject and because her mother uses broken English. Though English poses a great setback to her, she achieves success subsequent to her hard work and persistence. After asking friends ...

The aim of this essay is to present you with the reflections drawn upon the article titled. ‘Moving to US and Amassing a Fortune, No English Needed’ by Kirk Semple which was published in the Times in November in 2011. Semple approaches an issue which has been generating lots of heated debates among people since it provokes various reactions and beliefs. The issue on which Semple focuses is the extent to which the knowledge of a country’s language is or should be a prerequisite for immigrants who have decided to move to this country and settle down there. Although Semple focuses ...

Language Is The Level By Which We Navigate Through Life

Fredrick Douglas in his essay “Learning to Read and Write.” Reflects upon how he learned literacy with no teacher. Amy Tan’s essay deals with her discovery of not just speaking Chines and English, but speaking two different Englishes depending on context. In language, we learn from the world around us. In my personal experience of growing up in South Korea, I first learned to speak Korean, and did not even realize that there were other languages until I was older, when I was then taught English in school. While I do well with English, I do not feel ...

Summary of “Mother Tongue”

In the essay “Mother Tongue” the American writer Amy Tan gives her personal account of the different types of English that she has dealt with throughout her life. She is the daughter of Chinese immigrants and was brought up in California: in her text she recognizes that because of this combination, and especially due to her job, language has always been a constant subject of analysis. It was the fascination about it that drove her to spend significant time in thinking of how any style of communication can affect the way we create images and express ourselves with complex thoughts. ...

My experience with literacy involves two different languages. I am an international student and did not learn English when I was young. Instead I learned the language most commonly spoken in my native country. When I was learning my mother tongue, I never thought much about literacy. It just seemed to be something that happened naturally, that as long as I learned to read and write I would be literate. However, when I began to learn English, I discovered that literacy involves more than just reading and writing a limited amount of words. Literacy in English means that I can ...

Introduction

Sapir – Whorf theory states that the world is a reflection of our words. To a large extent, the real world does not exist outside the boundaries of words, of language. This implies a connection between identifying the terms and concepts that people want to express in order to project a communication process and the language used for expressing them (Chandler, “The Sapir – Whorf Hypothesis”).
This sends the speaker towards two different points. First, as scholars observe, the thought is directly linked with the language (Putz & Sicola 136; Krauss & Chiu 2), therefore, when a person speaks, s/he defines and expresses his/her thoughts thru the ...

Introduction

The Prince one of the theoretical writings which have accrued major debates on the applicability of its contents. The prince is a book which was written by an Italian analyst by the name Nicollo Machiavelli. Initially, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote this book the prince in his mother tongue language but it was later translated into a number of languages in order to be understood by interested stakeholders. The prince was written in the sixteenth century and it highly dominated the book industry with it luminous focus on the form of administration and governance appropriate for the best kingdom, country or territory. It ...