Tan, A. (2002). Mother tongue. In Enriching ESOL Pedagogy, by V. Zamel & R. Spack, Eds. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Shavonne Johnson Summary and Reaction
Amy Tan in her essay “Mother Tongue” focuses on how language has not only
influenced her professional, but her personal life. She details how she becomes “keenly aware” of the varieties of English that exist within her. Tan notes how she can fluidly move between what some may refer to as her mother’s “broken” English, or their “family talk”, and her own standard American English. Even though her mother’s tongue is familiar and discernible to her, Tan realizes that the larger world does not interact with her mother and other flawed English speakers in this manner. Ultimately, the way one speaks English influences the way one is received in society. She comes to understand that without adequate language skills access can be denied as she recounts how she is often pulled in to translate in clear English her mother’s intent. Tan, in the end, does not discount her mother’s way of communicating because it too has a story to tell. It is through her mother that Tan appreciates that flawed English does not mean one has nothing to say.
I appreciate Tan's revelation that all dialects have a place in American culture. Tan confirmed my previous thinking that the ability to be able to access standard American English speaking and writing skills are key to making oneself available for a high level service and career opportunities. These are important skills that our students need to understand how to navigate between. They can validly communicate one way at home and with their peers and another way in the classroom, but learn how to be multilingual and fluidly move between these environments. As a teacher I want to help get them to the point of this fluency.
Qian Hua Ge 1. Summary
In this autobiographical essay, Amy Tan reflects on the different versions of English, “mother tongues”, she grew up with as a Chinese American. She recalls being ashamed of her mother’s inability to speak fluent English and frustrated by the fact that her English and IQ test scores were often affected by the different cultural perspectives with which she was brought up. Later on in life, Tan realizes as a mature novelist that all the different Englishes she speaks, including those broken and simplified ones that she uses with her mother, make her who she is and fuel her creativity. She is proud to use her “mother tongues” to capture the essence of a unique Asian American experience.
Questions on this reading:
• What are some of the similarities and differences between Amy Tan’s and Richard
Rodriguez’s bilingual childhood experiences? Do you think Tan responds more positively to her mother’s “broken, limited” English?
• What are the positive and negative effects of her mother’s English on Tan’s understanding of the world and on her writing?
• How do Tan’s understandings of her mother’s languages and her mother as a person evolve?
• What does Tan’s experience of growing as a bilingual child say about language pragmatics? • How does the mainstream English education alter Tan’s perspectives?
2. Reaction
What a coincidence that we should discuss this reading in our ESL seminar! I included this reading for my ENG 101 class this semester because I think both Amy Tan and Richard Rodriguez touch on an important issue of growing up as a bilingual child from an immigrant family. Although I think Rodriguez exhibited more negative feelings toward his parents’ native language and culture than Tan did when he was young, they both come to terms with that other language of intimacy they share at home as adults and fully assimilated Americans. I plan to ask my students to discuss the similarities and differences between Rodriguez’s and Tan’s experiences. I also want them to think about whether they can relate to either author. In terms of personal experience, I see many examples of what Tan has been through around me. My cousins are like Amy Tan, born into Chinese immigrant families, in which the primary language spoken in Chinese. Similar to Mrs. Tan, my uncles and aunts don’t speak very fluent, accent-free English even though they can get by and get a job with their English. One of my Chinese-American friends, who was an English major in college and teaches ESL, once told about making phone calls for his parents and grandparents all the time when he was young because he is the one who speaks perfect English. First-generation immigrant children are often the hope and the only connection to main stream culture that most parents have, especially those parents who are not fluent in the public language. The problem with that is as those children become more and more assimilated into the public sphere and fully grasp the language of outer society, their connection with home and the private is becoming tenuous. They see the
difference between their parents’ language and culture and what they are taught to believe in mainstream culture as unfavorable to them. They also tend to distance themselves from the language and culture at home. This is the price that most immigrant families and children pay for becoming American. Schooling (including our writing classes) also helps their assimilation process by teaching them what is considered appropriate (i.e. not foreign) in the public sphere and molding their way of seeing things in light of the mainstream culture.
Susan Horowitz
1. The type of academic, standard English which Amy Tan (Asian-American author of “The Joy Luck Club” and other books) uses for essays and lectures is very unlike the English she uses with her Chinese-born mother in vocabulary, syntax, complexity of grammatical forms, etc.
2. Amy Tan uses a different kind of English (more simplified in grammar and vocabulary and more concrete and direct) with her mother and her husband , and this “home” English feels more intimate.
3. Amy Tan’s mother speaks her own type of non-standard English, with its own rules, even though she is able to read and understand complex English writing.
4. Even though Amy’s friends sometimes don’t understand all of what her mother says, Amy understands it perfectly, appreciates its communicative expressiveness, and says her mother’s English shaped her sense of the world.
5. Because her mother’s English is often perceived as limited or “broken” by outsiders, her mother is also often viewed as being intellectually limited and inferior. Amy learned to speak for her mother, even pretending to be her mother, in order get better service and
cooperation from the English-speaking world, for example from financial institutions and medical services.
7. Amy was also discouraged from pursuing a career as a writer. However, due to Amy’s own rebellious nature, she insisted on majoring in literature and became first a non-fiction writer and then a novelist.
8. Her original draft of her novel “The Joy Luck Club” was written with grammatically correct but overly complex, confusing, academic English. When she imagined her mother as her
intended reader, her prose style became clearer, more colorful, more direct, and more enjoyable to read.
9. The language style of “The Joy Luck Club” is standard, correct English - shaped Amy Tan’s mother’s vivid, expressive English. Amy knew she had succeeded when her mother called her book “so easy to read.”
David Bahr
Summary in Key Points:
* Multi-language speakers possess many forms of English, what Tan refers to as her “Englishes.”
* These vernaculars are enriching; they are not bastard versions of a “correct” language; they are not broken.
* Standard tests of English language are limited in what they test, and often work against second language learners with a broader view of the English language.
* Such “standardized” views of language work against many English language learners,
producing a sense of inferiority and shame; these views discourage students from taking risks, and shying away from literature. This is an unfortunate consequence as it also deprives the English language of further richness.
* The richness of language also conveys, what Tan identifies as “intent, passion, imagery, the rhythms of speech and the nature of thoughts.”
Thoughts and Implications:
I definitely recognize the speech patterns in my own Chinese students; but, more than that, it highlights my experience with these students’ tendency to withdraw from conversation. As Tan felt a sense of shame regarding her mother, an intelligent woman who spoke in “broken” English, I perceive a sense of shame in my students in regards to their communication skills. This shame often results in a complete surrender (fewer submitted assignments; increased absenteeism; and, finally, students withdrawing from class). I think to foster second-language writers, we need to resist institutionalized shame and work to highlight the strengths, not perceived weaknesses, of “Englishes,” and “polyvocality.”
Further Thoughts
Zamel, V. (1998). Transcending boundaries: Complicating the scene of teaching language. College ESL, 6, 2, 1-11
Kevin S. Hall
Zamel’s article was an analysis of how writing instructors, oddly enough, often actually impede the progress of their ESL students’ skills due to outmoded views of how language is acquired. The instructors’ frustrations can be summarized as follows:
• An assumption that language ought to be taught first or separately and not part of the instructor’s goal
• Wanting to hold students responsible for their performance without contributing to such • A focus on mechanics, and testing often done with multiple-choice type questions • Trying to teach through conventions of other disciplines
• Trying to be language police, which devalues the native language, makes students feel inadequate, and calls into question their teaching methods
Zamel encourages instructors to “embrace the richness of multiple perspectives” by realizing that “language cannot be contained within boundaries.” She encourages instructors to see students’ struggles as sources of growth and transformation and not let discipline-specific rules in academia keep instructors from understanding the complex nature of learning, especially when a second language is involved.
It was surprising to me that Zamel’s studies indicated that writing courses have done little to help students with language acquisition. Because language acquisition consists of proficiency in speech and writing, it seems absurd to me that a writing course would not contribute to a student’s learning of a new language.
My guess is that American society has changed a lot since Zamel wrote this article in 1996. While it is regrettable that some colleges are cutting back on foreign language
requirements in an effort to save money, society has also become more of a hodgepodge of languages and cultures. As an instructor at a truly diverse campus like BMCC in New York, it is virtually impossible to go into a freshman composition class and teach as though all were on the same playing field with proficiency in English language. I have often found, in fact, that some students who are fluent in more than one language have a better command of grammar than the native speakers because they’ve already had to navigate through subjects, verbs, direct and indirect objects, and pronouns, just for starters. Some native speakers never learned these basic grammatical conventions and assume they are writing and speaking correctly—or if they are correct already, they are unable to explain why.
I always start my semester by telling the non-native speakers that they are smarter than I am—that although I took many semesters of Latin, French and Spanish, I could never sit down and write an academic paper in any one of those languages. I also (with humor) warn the native speakers that the non-native speakers often try harder and end up doing fairly well in my class (true). I also do group exercises so they can practice speaking with each other and sharing ideas in English. and share I don’t think my ESL students feel inadequate in my class.
That being said, my challenge becomes how to correct their mistakes in a way that helps
as well as to correct mechanical errors and make the presentation as immaculate as possible. The nice presentation often sells the ideas within, often like the curb appeal that sells the house.
Born-and-bred Americans too often see things in black and white, right and wrong, yes and no. Immigrants from other countries teach us that multiple languages often give multiple truths. Such expressiveness is a gift to the rest of us. I wish my students learned as much from me as I learn from them.
Ivelisse Rodriguez Summary
Zamel has a problem with the reductive way that language acquisition is thought about. She thinks professors focus too much on student errors and that they make assumptions about the intellectual abilities of students. She states that faculty believe that aspects of language can be taught out of context—in a way that is unmoored from specific meaning. She also believes that faculty members think that language can be taught in very specific ways—“linear,
cumulative, and in predictable ways” (2). According to Zamel, faculty have the attitude that language problems need to be resolved in ESL courses. Her essay focuses on the prevalence of these ideas. She goes on to explain why this attitude is problematic. For example, she thinks that student voices are silenced in non-ESL classes because instructors believe it is not their jobs to teach language acquisition. Also, she believes that one language is pitted against another, and students have to give up their identities to learn English. Her solution is that faculty need to work together across the curriculum to aid ESL students.
Thoughts
I doubt her solution is viable because faculty in other disciplines are not trained to look at language. She thinks that we should all shoulder the responsibility for teaching language
acquisition. She doesn’t believe it should just be taught in ESL courses. I remember having an ESL student in my English 101 class. He had very sophisticated ideas, but I always thought that if he had gone off somewhere and worked on his English more, he could have done better in the class. His ESL issues impeded his progress in the class, regardless of his intellectual abilities.
Zamel believes that intellectual abilities transfer from language to language. I would agree with this to an extent. While my 101 student’s intellectual abilities translated somewhat, in my current Creative Writing class, I have a Chinese student and a Uruguayan student and both have indicated a sense of frustration at not being able to express themselves as much as they would like because they are not communicating in their native languages. So, I see a glimmer of their intellectual abilities, but it’s limited.
Hirsch, L. (1996). Mainstreaming ESL students: A counterintuitive perspective. College ESL, 6, 2, 12-26.BAIADA
Christa Baiada Summary
Linda Hirsch writes about the difficulties ESL students have in mainstream college courses. She describes the move from ESL courses to academic content courses as “a great leap in the complexity of the material to be learned and in the corresponding linguistic and cognitive proficiencies required” (14). The difficulties students encounter include: understanding the teacher’s vocabulary and rapid speech, inability to distinguish important from trivial and take effective notes, average textbooks written at higher reading level than most ESL students have attained, writing skills aren’t developed enough for academic tasks, intimidated by native speakers in the classroom who often display impatience at ESL speakers, and the inability to articulate sources of their own confusion. Hirsch advocates reflection on our teaching
pedagogies to minimize the lecture and create maximum opportunities for students to make meaning for themselves (talk, write, read about course materials). She emphasizes the need to talk primarily for ESL students . She suggests following lectures with question and answer sessions, using small group discussions, assigning short summary or mini-essays, and asking students to write questions or reactions to material presented.
Thoughts and implications
Certainly the student difficulties Hirsch discusses seem familiar. Many of our students at BMCC – ESL and native speakers – demonstrate such struggles. However, I don’t think the lecture/textbook based pedagogy described in the article is very common in our composition courses. Many of our instructors run discussion-based classes and employ small group work. However, no doubt there is more teacher talk than student talk. My guess is that many of us already do several of the things Hirsch suggests but still need to be more reflective of basic aspects of our teaching, such as how and how much we talk, how we frame questions and prepare students for readings, which students we tend to call on, how we deal with those who participate little and those who always participate, the pace of the class (do we give students time to think or write before asking questions? How long do we wait after asking a question without response before answering ourselves?), and the readings we assign. In regard to the readings, this gets tricky because we want and need to prepare students to read academic material but quite practically some of it is a challenge for ALL our students.
April Andres
Task One: Summarize the main points of the reading.
-students can take core classes in their native language until their English gets better -even so, these students will have problems when they mainstream
-samples of 3 students describing, in their words, how they, feel, and what’s happening 2 them in the classroom.
-Jose, 34 years old, Alice and Asdrubal, a 28yr. old student from Honduras -He talks about his issues
-transcripts in the essay r word 4 word, not edited.
-tutors attended same classes as their ESL students as 2 b able to write about classroom environment.
-tutors took notes on 6 things in the classroom. 1) numbers of questions asked
2) types of questions asked 3) length of required answers 4) Use of teacher’s voice
5) Physical movement of teacher 6) Other non-verbal communication
-then the tutor took notes on the students’ reactions to the teacher, and also to each other. -essay gives example of a lecture in a class.
It’s an example of a traditionally taught class and how students fared in this setting. -tutors found 3 problem areas. Cognitive, linguistic, and affective.
1 problem with note taking
2. reading comprehension and vocabulary
3. Writing -just because they don’t know how to write doesn’t mean that they don’t know the subject matter
4.) affective limitations –intimidated by native speakers./-low self-esteem /-embarrassed to confess they r lost/confused.
-tutors found that we need 4-12 yrs. of study 2 really b fluent in another language. Trial is described :
-putting ESL students in w/ native speakers best 4 the student? -native speakers r impatient w/ ESL students
-now ESL students speak even less in the class. -specialized courses 4 only ESL students are best.
-another model show s one native speaker in an ESL class enhanced the class -is there an ideal ratio?
-are teachers qualified to handle ESL students? -teachers not prepared to teach ESL students -not trained properly
-inappropriate teaching methods
-lecture is bad 4 ESL students
-they need 2 b able 2 talk, write and read. -talking is maybe more important than writing -helps with true meaning of what is being read. -students learn to paraphrase in their own words.
-talking and writing helps make connections w/ new materials and what they already know.
-instructors can do 4 things in the classroom to help 1 give question and answer period
2students should write reactions to material being discussed 3 students teach each other in small groups
4. students write short summaries or mini-papers in the middle or end of lecture
-the idea that the “Teacher filled with knowledge, student knows nothing” is bad way to teach.
-peer discussion and writing groups.
-need to strengthen speaking and listening skills.
-teaching should b students centered not text book lecture centered.
Task 2 Discuss any connection u c between the reading and your ENG 101 teaching and/or personal experience.
-students afraid to speak bad English in front of other students. -afraid 2 ask questions
-have often found that after a class lecture is over I’ll do a review. That’s when I find out “what the teacher teaches is not the same as what the pupil learns. (p.46) (in my essay pg.16) I deal with a lot of linguistic problems.
1.) Note taking: p.17
-I make my students take lots of notes.
-some of them make notes in English and then transcribe them into, usually, Chinese, Korean or Japanese (not many Spanish students transcribe their notes from English into Spanish.
-have seen spelling errors in their notes as described on (p. 17, paragraph 14)
2.) Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary: p.17
-my students do not work with text books for the very reason cited in the essay. (average
college textbook is written on a 12th-16th grade level. (P. 17)
-they work with old 101 Eng. Exams.
-we go over words in the essay that might not be understood and I give them a chance 2 write the meanings in the columns.
3.)Writing: p. 18
-have seen many papers where students copy material from other sources. -however very rarely do my Asian students do this.
-I have also discovered, often 2 my surprise, that while the grammar is horrific, the content is correct. They do know the material that was taught in the class room , they just don’t properly know how 2 write it, explain it.
Affective Limitations: p.18
-have often seen low self esteem, poor self image hinder my students
-also seen students come up 2 me @ the end of the class, when no one else is around 2 tell me that they don’t understand something.
-I don’t let them get away with it however.
-everyone in my class has 2 read out loud, and answer questions in the class. (no one wants to answer, I chose name arbitrarily .
-they also have to move up from the back of the class to the front.
Native and Non Native Speakers: p. 19
--I have seen native speakers become impatient w/ non-native students (sad to say, I am guilty of this as well)
-that’s when I stop giving the answers, stop speaking and have a native speaker help out the ESL student
-I know for years I was inadequately trained for these students
-I had to come with my own ways 2 get the “course of study” across 2 these students. -I have used inappropriate teaching methods
-I usually do not write words on the board but do take the time 2 spell the words out for the students and go over and over until each student has it.
-don’t use enough group work. Don’t believe in it. (Yet I c that this study recommends it.)
Am never so amazed as 2 when I ask a student, sitting in the back of the classroom, after a lecture, 2 summarize what they’ve just heard. They answer correctly. On the other hand I am also stunned when I’ve spent 20 minutes on a certain topic, ask the ESL student, sitting in the front row, what we’ve just covered and they haven’t a clue. (or maybe they r just afraid 2 speak out loud for fear of being wrong.
Helen Dimos Summary:
This paper is written by Professor Hirsch, who teaches at CUNY Hostos and has conducted research on the ESL community there, and as such is of particular interest to us at BMCC. The paper opens by stressing how important it is to focus on ESL learning at a time when more and more students are ESL learners, both within CUNY and in the wider U.S. Hirsch creates empathy in her reader by providing short transcripts of ESL students speaking about how hard it is for them to cope in classes which are taught with an audience of native English speakers in mind.
The paper is basically divided in two. The first half highlights the major challenges faced by ESL students in "mainstreamed content classes", including note-taking (difficulty
comprehending and sifting through information quickly to decide what needs to be taken down); reading comp. and vocab (readings and vocabulary that is significantly above the level that most ESL students are comfortable with); academic writing (Hirsch stresses that the knowledge ESL students are able to show in their essays does not necessarily match up with what they learned in the class); and "affective limitations" (the hits to self-esteem and self-image that ESL students face). The second half of the paper, titled "The Realities of Mainstreaming: A Counterintuitive Perspective", suggests that certain widely accepted notions of pedagogy may actually be detrimental, particularly to ESL students. These include the assumption that the best approach to catching ESL students up is to "mainstream" them-- to place them in classes with native speakers of English. But in practice, this results in certain difficulties, such as ESL students not participating in class due to embarrassment and/or fear, and native speaking-students'
frustration with ESL students. The second counterintuitive claim Hirsch makes is that difficulties ESL students encounter in the classroom may have just as much to do with flaws in how we teach than with particular challenges they face. As examples she states that most teachers are not trained in teaching ESL students, and that the form of the lecture, with its focus on passive learning and its minimum of interactiveness, hurts both ESL and other students. The last two counterintuitive points she makes are that knowledge is not solely held by the instructor
(students can learn very much from each other), and that the skills of listening and speaking are just as important as the more traditional candidates, such as analytic thinking, reading, and writing. She concludes with the powerful statement that "there is no way to help ESL students succeed in the academic mainstream." In other words, if we are to really improve the education of ESL students, we must develop alternative yet parallel strategies and resources for them.
Reaction:
accumulation: it behaves as a growing list of difficulties faced by ESL students, and as it is 'sandwiched' by their actual voices, it calls out for understanding. Instead of viewing ESL students as other, as a challenge in the classroom or a source of frustration, it got me to
experience the students' nervousness, fear, self-belittlement, timidity, shyness, and frustration.
