“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan
Questions
Meaning:
1. For Tan the phrase “mother tongue” has a special meaning. How would you summarize this
meaning? Why does Tan feel so deeply about her “mother tongue”?
2. In what ways does the English that Tan’s mother speaks affect how people outside the Chinese
American community think of her? What examples does Tan give to demonstrate this fact of
her mother’s life?
3. In paragraph 15, Tan writes, “[M]y mother’s English almost had an effect on limiting my
possibilities in life as well.” What does she mean? Why does she use the qualifier “almost”?
Purpose & Audience:
4. Why do you suppose Tan wrote this essay? Does she have a purpose beyond changing readers’
perceptions of her mother’s “broken’ English? What passages support your answer?
5. How can you tell that Tan is not writing primarily to an audience of Asian Americans? If Asian
Americans were her primary audience, how might the essay be different?
Method & Structure:
6. How does Tan develop her definition of her “mother tongue”? That is, how does she best help
readers understand her mother’s speech?
7. Tan divides her essay into three sections , the second beginning in paragraph 8 and the third
beginning in paragraph 18. What is the focus of each section? Why do you think Tan divided
the essay like this?
8. Other Methods--In paragraph 2and again in paragraph 21, Tan refers to “all the Englishes I grew
up with.” How does she classify these various “Englishes”?
Language:
9. What troubles Tan about the labels “broken,” “fractured,” and “limited” for her mother’s
English (paragraph 8)? How do these labels contrast with the way she views her mother’s
speech?
10. In paragraphs 16 and 17, Tan writes about the kinds of vocabulary items that appear on
standardized English test. In contrast to the precision of the answers to mathematical
questions, why were the answer to vocabulary questions “always a judgement call, a matter of
opinion and personal experience” for her?
