Mother Tongue

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

How well do you believe the PSAT, SAT, PreACT, ACT, or other standardized tests represent students’ skills in math or English? What assessment might give a better representation of skills?

Teaching Suggestion: Conduct an anonymous class survey by providing paper ballots to students, with no name required. On the ballot, list the four tests plus “other” and ask students to check the tests they have taken. Then, provide SAT and ACT score ranges and ask students to check the score range into which they fell on one or both tests. Collect the ballots, then tally and display the results. Reference these results during the discussion.

• “Bless the Tests: Three Reasons for Standardized Testing” by Aaron Churchill discusses the purposes of standardized testing.
• “Pro and Con: Standardized Tests” considers the practice of such testing.

Short Activity

In “Mother Tongue,” Tan discusses the difficulty Asian students often have with standardized language-based assessment items. She mentions, in particular, the infamous SAT word analogies. She elaborates that students from varied cultures may think about language differently, which clouds the idea of a “right” answer.