Test on Mother Tongue: Language and Identity

Question 1: Amy Tan's mother personally saw the gangster Du Yusong when he showed up at her wedding.

A. Ano

B. Ne

Explanation: Amy Tan's mother states, "He come to my wedding. I didn’t see, I heard it," indicating she did not personally witness the gangster's presence.

Question 2: According to the narrator, why did her husband not notice a switch in her English when she spoke to her mother?

A. He was focused on the furniture prices and not the language being used.

B. They have often used that same kind of English with each other, establishing it as their language of intimacy.

C. He has a limited understanding of different English variations.

D. The narrator's 'family talk' English is indistinguishable from her standard English.

Explanation: The narrator states that her husband didn't notice a switch in her English because 'over the twenty years we’ve been together I’ve often used that same kind of English with him, and sometimes he even uses it with me. It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language I grew up with.'

Question 3: The author perceived the answers on English tests as a judgment call, influenced by opinion and personal experience.

A. Ano

B. Ne

Explanation: The text explicitly states, 'Whereas, for me at least, the answers on English tests were always a judgment call, a matter of opinion and personal experience.'

Question 4: Sociologists and linguists generally agree that the language spoken in immigrant families plays a large role in shaping a child's language.

A. Ano

B. Ne

Explanation: The text states that sociologists and linguists would likely say a person's developing language skills are more influenced by peers, directly contradicting the idea that they generally agree on a large role for immigrant family language in shaping a child's language.

Question 5: According to the study materials, what specific difficulty did the author experience when attempting word analogy questions?

A. The author struggled to identify the core logical or semantic relationship between the word pairs.

B. The author was unable to disregard the mental images generated by the initial set of words.

C. The analogy options provided were often too literal and lacked imaginative depth for the author.

D. The author did not understand the instructions or what the word analogy tests were requiring.

Explanation: The study material explicitly states, 'I knew what the tests were asking, but I could not block out of my mind the images already created by the first'. This indicates that the author's primary challenge was the inability to ignore personal associations or images, rather than a lack of understanding of the test's objective or the relationship itself. The author also states 'I could never think that way,' which suggests difficulty with the abstract semantic relationship, but the most direct and specific challenge mentioned is the inability to block out images.