Unit 1 Great scientists Reading课时作业

第一节 阅读理解

Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use. I was giving a talk to many people, the same talk I had already given to half a dozen other groups. The nature of the talk was about my writing, my life, and my book, The Joy Luck Club. The talk was going along well enough until I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her. I was saying things like, "the intersection of memory upon imagination"- a speech filled with all the forms of standard English that I had learned in school, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother ① .

You should know that my mother's expressive command of English doesn't show how much she actually understands. She reads the Forbes report and listens to Wall Street Week－all kinds of things I can't begin to understand, ② Yet some of my friends tell me they understand none of what my mother says, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. ③ Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, and full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world.

Lately, I've been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks. ④ Like others, I have described it to people as "broken" English. But I wince when I say that. It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than "broken"，as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, I've heard other terms used, "limited English"，for example. But they seem to indicate that everything is limited, including people's perceptions of the limited English speaker.

And I had plenty of 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 not hear her.

When I was fifteen, she used to have me call people on the phone to pretend I was she. One time I was forced to call her stockbroker in New York and say in an adolescent voice that was not very convincing, "This is Mrs. Tan". And my mother was standing in the back whispering loudly, "why he don't send me check, already two weeks late. So mad he lie to me, losing me money". And then I said in perfect English and gave him warnings. The following week there we were in front this astonished stockbroker, and I was sitting there red-faced and quiet, and my mother, the real Mrs. Tan, was shouting at his boss in her broken English.

I think my mother's English almost had an effect on limiting my possibilities in life as well. Sociologists and linguists probably will tell you that a person's developing language skills are more influenced by peers. But I do think that the language spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families plays a large role in shaping the language of the child. I also had teachers who were trying to steering me away from writing and into math and science.

Fortunately, I happen to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions made about me. I became an English major my first year in college. When I began to write, I decided I should envision a reader for the stories I would write. And the reader I decided upon was my mother, because there were stories about my mothers. So with this reader in