Advanced Essay #2: More than Meets the Eye

Gregory Tasik

Mr. Block

English 3 - Earth

December 10, 2017

More than Meets the Eye

There is much more than meets the eye when it comes to being bilingual. Merriam-Webster defines bilingual as “using or able to use two languages especially with equal fluency.” The majority of people define fluency in a language by knowing the grammar and conventions of the language, the way the language should be spoken. Fluency in a language requires a lot more than just knowing grammar; it is understanding the flow of the language, the casualness of it when it is spoken by native tongue, and understanding its deeper meaning.

My tongue is an anomaly. It cannot decide what or who or where it wants to be. At home, I speak “Indoglish”, an awkward mix of English and Indonesian. Neither perfect, but articulated well in a home where it has evolved for over 10 years. My Indonesian is the “broken” Indonesian I’ve adopted from my parents. It is not fluent nor correct in any definition of literacy. I cannot write in Indonesian nor am very confident in my conversational skills. In my parent’s native home, I am praised for my ability to speak English. They ask me to teach them simple words like “attitude” or “motorcycle,” amazed by how the words roll off my tongue. On the other hand, my Indonesian to them is that of a toddler. I know my cousins mean well when they laugh at my pronunciation, but it cuts deep. How is it possible that my own identity can be called into question?

In English class it takes the form of the standard English; the adverbs, conjugations, and vocabulary that have been taught and crammed in my head over the years. Outside of the class, it is the not-so-standard English I’ve adopted from my friends and community. It is the slang and phrases that teachers would deem “inappropriate” in an essay and would make English scholars cringe. It is understanding the underlying messages in certain intonations and phrases, the subliminal significance within a conversation. In America, I am considered as any typical human being.

“All answers look the same to me!”

“It’s B, it has to be the right answer.”

“But C could also work, matter of fact, A and D also work.”

“I give up. If worst comes to worst always pick C right?

Unlike the English and Comprehension section of the SATs that was a straight, newly paved highway, the writing section of the SATs was long winding road that I was unable to navigate through. The way the writing section worked was that they first present a story. In the stories, there would be multiple phrases or sentences that were underlined and there would be questions on whether the underlined portions needed to be changed, moved around, or combined. To do well on the writing portion of the text, the test taker would need a good command of standard English conventions and rules.

“The underlined sentence could be placed before sentence 3. Or would it be better if it were placed at the beginning of the paragraph? Maybe I should just leave it where it is.”

“Ooh, they’re probably trying to trick me!”

Every question was a battle. The longer I looked at the question, the more the other answers made sense. In Mother Tongue, Amy Tan uttered a very similar response: “the answers on English tests were always a judgement call, a matter of opinion and personal experience”(Tan,3). She, a fellow Asian-American, struggled with her command of the English language. Tests like the SAT were based on stories and experiences that felt distant to my own. The language used in the tests had words that haven’t seen the light of day since the 1920s and were not used in the common English I spoke with. How was I supposed to connect to the text?

Ultimately, there is no easy to answer. I cannot expect myself wake up one day and master the English language. I cannot expect myself to have the same thought processes as those who grew up with two native English speaking parents, and on a larger scale, I cannot expect myself to think/process the same way as any other human being. We all have different experiences which shape our ideas of literacy and which forms of literacy we identify with. My areas of strength are areas of weakness for another person, and vise versa. It’s all just a matter of  putting the work in to make up for the areas I lack in, even it if means SAT prep on grammar for a couple hours a week.