Anne Agard

Professor Hacker

English 101

7 April 1999

Two Language Learners

       This semester we have read two essays about two very

different language learners, both published in our text Guidelines.

The first case is Julia Alvarez's autobiographical essay, "My

English" (30-34).  Alvarez, an award-winning author who writes in

English, grew up in the Dominican Republic but came to the United

States to live when she was ten years old. In her essay, she

shares her memories of the steps by which she "landed in the

English language" (34), that is to say,  became fluent. These

included growing up in a family where some adults were fluent

English speakers, attending a English-speaking school in the

Dominican Republic, and receiving excellent instruction in the

language at the school she attended in New York City. The other

case is that of Amy Tan's mother, whose English is vividly

described in her daughter's essay "Mother Tongue" (46-51).  Mrs.

Tan was born in China and came to the United States to live as an

adult.  Amy Tan quotes this example of her mother's English:

              "Du Yusong having business like fruit stand Like off the

               street kind...That man want to ask Du Zong father take

               him in like become own family. Du Zong father wasn't

               but didn't take seriously, until that man big like become

               a mafia. Now important person, very hard to inviting

               him..." (47)

        This "broken" English was Mrs. Tan's lifelong pattern,

although her daughter also mentions that her comprehension of

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English was actually quite good (48).

       What explains the very different English speaking abilities of

these two second language learners, Julia Alvarez and Amy Tan's

mother? The difference can be accounted for by the very different

circumstances of their lives, and the different conditions under

which they learned the language.

       First of all, Julia Alvarez and Mrs. Tan began to learn English

at very different ages. Alvarez was exposed to English spoken by

family members when she was a very young child, and when the

time came for her to start school, she was sent to one where the

language was English (31). She then went to New York to live

when she was only ten (30). We do not know exactly how old

Amy Tan's mother was when she came to the United States,

but we can assume that she was an adult. It is rare for an adult

immigrant to learn a second language so perfectly as to succeed

in it as professional writer, as Julia Alvarez did. 

       Another factor that probably contributed to the difference

between Julia Alvarez's English and Mrs. Tan's is that Spanish and

English are related languages. Although they are not mutually

intelligible, there are some similarities in grammatical structure

and a rather large shared vocabulary. Chinese and English, on the

other hand, are unrelated languages with very different

grammatical structure and almost no shared vocabulary. The

result is that Spanish speakers are often able to learn English

more quickly and more completely than Chinese speakers. As an

ESL teacher, I have noticed that the two language groups show

relatively little difference in their progress at first, when they are

learning the basics of the language; however, Spanish speakers

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are able to make a huge leap once they have mastered very basic

English vocabulary, much of which is different from Spanish, and

reach the level of more difficult words and concepts, which tend

to be cognates in the two languages because both languages

have derived much of their vocabulary from Latin. A Chinese

speaker, however, has no such benefit; every new word and

every new grammar point is unfamiliar, and represents a new

struggle.

       Finally, there were some important differences in the

communities that Julia Alvarez and Mrs. Tan lived in. Alvarez's

family seems to have been a cosmopolitan one in which both

English and Spanish were spoken by all three generations. She

mentions that her mother prompted her to speak English at the

dinner table (Alvarez 32), and that  even her grandfather was

fluent enough in English to make jokes in the language (33). Mrs.

Tan, on the other hand, was an immigrant living in Oakland,

California, where there is a large Chinese-speaking community.

We can guess that perhaps she spent much of her time with

others who spoke Chinese and whose English was no better than

her own.

       Immigrants who master English with flawless fluency, like

Julia Alvarez, are often considered by Americans to be the

standard that all immigrants should live up to. Its is probably not

air, however, to expect everyone learning English to achieve the

same results as Alvarez, who benefited from unusual advantages

due to the particular circumstances of her age, family life,

primary language, and opportunity to practice English.

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Works Cited

Alvarez, Julia. "My English." Guidelines: A Cross

       Cultural Reading/Writing Text. 3rd Ed. Ruth Spack. New York:

       Cambridge University Press, 2007. 30-34.

Tan, Amy. "Mother Tongue." Guidelines: A Cross

       Cultural Reading/Writing Text. 3rd Ed. Ruth Spack. New York:

       Cambridge University Press, 2007. 46-51.