Multilingual Identity: IB Text Review

TASK ONE
Read the text carefully and answer the following questions:

1. Why do you think she was able to understand four different varieties of Chinese?
2. Under what circumstances did she learn English?
3. How did she feel towards the English language while she was at school?
4. What does she mean by 'linguistic schizophrenia' (lines 75-76)?
5. What does she mean by the phrase, 'sometimes I am made to feel like a kind of cultural Frankenstein' (lines 118-119)?

TASK TWO 

Find synonyms for the following words and phrases that appear in the text:

1. in an easy conspiracy (line 8)
2. aloof (line 9)
3. evoking (line l0)
4. sibilant (line l3)
5. unquestioningly (line 15)
6. resonance (line 20)
7. wallowing (line 50)
8. nuanced (line 53)

TASK THREE
Copy and paste the following table into a Word document, and then complete it, using information from the text:

	CHINESE	THAI		ENGLISH
In which social domains of the author´s life was each language used?
Who did Minfong Ho learn each language from?
How did she learn this language?
To which part of the body does the writer relate each language?
What problems did she have with each language?
What expressions might she use to describe her relationship with each language?
What does the writer wish to convey by these expressions?