Read this passage from “the fall of the house of usher.” what is the narrator describing? one of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. a small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white and without interruption or device. certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. no outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor.

Read the excerpt from "mother tongue." lately, i’ve been giving more thought to the kind of english my mother speaks. like others, i have described it to people as “broken” or “fractured” english. but i wince when i say that. it has always bothered me that i can think of no other way to describe it other than “broken,” as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholeness and soundness. what best supports the inference that tan believes nonstandard english is no less valid than standard english? tan spends a lot of time thinking about her mother’s “fractured” english. tan has trouble thinking of descriptive words when she is writing. tan’s american education makes it difficult for her to understand her mother. tan winces when she describes her mother’s english as “broken.”