Question

Read the excerpt from "Mother Tongue." Those tests were constructed around items like fill-in-the-blank sentence completion, such as “Even though Tom was ______, Mary thought he was _____.” And the correct answer always seemed to be the most bland combinations of thoughts, for example, “Even though Tom was foolish, Mary thought he was ridiculous.” Well, according to my mother, there were very few limitations as to what Tom could have been and what Mary might have thought of him. So I never did well on tests like that. How does Tan build a central idea of her story in the excerpt? A: Tan discusses the types of questions on achievement tests to support the idea that the tests limit students’ ability to write well. B: Tan explains a question on a language achievement test to support the idea that the tests should include more interesting content. C: Tan gives an example of her experience with achievement tests to support the idea that they are not always accurate measures of language ability. D: Tan considers how her mother might answer a question on a test to support the idea that nonstandard English limits a person’s ability to communicate.

Answer 1

Amy Tan uses her personal experiences with language tests to illustrate how they fail to capture the complexities of language, suggesting they aren't always accurate in measuring language ability.

Step-by-step explanation:

In the excerpt from "Mother Tongue," Amy Tan builds a central idea around the limitations of standardized language achievement tests. Option C is the correct choice: Tan gives an example of her experience with achievement tests to support the idea that they are not always accurate measures of language ability.

She suggests that the tests are too restrictive and do not account for the variety of ways in which language can be understood and used, influenced by cultural and personal factors. Tan's own difficulty with these tests illustrates this point.

For example, Tan's mother's perspective on the potential answers to a fill-in-the-blank sentence completion question demonstrates that real-world language use is often more nuanced than the tests allow. The correct answer is option (c).