It was after the Vietnam War, when my mother of twenty five years of age came to America with dreams of opportunities for her children and for herself. She brought with her culture and her language. She came to America without learning how to speak English very well, but she did learn enough to get by. She started doing manual labor to support the family, but the work was exhausting. As a result, my mother decided to learn English because she realized she could empower herself through learning English and also writing it. After years of going to English classes after work, my mother learned how to speak English and gained the ability to express herself on paper. So now my mother is a successful business woman in America as she owns a grocery store, nail shop and several building units and gain financial security. Certainly without learning English, my mother would not be able to become as successful as she is today. Language is a very powerful tool. It is the most phenomenal invention in human development.
             Without language, people would not be able to forge relationships and everyone would become isolated. Language brings people of similar languages together. When my mother arrived to the U.S, she realized that she had to learn English in order to live a comfortable live in the United States. Learning the country's language is a minimum requirement for any immigrant but to master English can empower an individual in America society.. In Mellix's essay From Outside, In, Mellix wrote, "Not until years later, as a college student, did I begin to understand our ambivalence toward English, our scorn of it, our need to master it, to own and be owned by it-an ambivalence that extended to the public-school classroom.(290, Mellix)" Mellix believed that in some ways the English language has a power over us. The English language dictates the way we write, talk and think.
             The spoken language is a uniquely human tool....