Read the excerpt from "mother tongue."
yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. some say they understand 80 to 90
percent. some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure chinese. but to me, my mother's english is
perfectly clear, perfectly natural. it's my mother tongue. her language, as i hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and
imagery. that was the language that shape the way i saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world.
how does tan build a central idea of her story in the excerpt?
a)tan describes her friends' understanding of her mother to support the idea that nonstandard forms of english should only be
used in the home.
b)tan uses numerical data to support the idea that nonstandard forms of english are on the decline and being replaced by on
standard form.
c)tan tells a story about her mother's life to support the idea that learning the language of a new country comes naturally to
most people.
d)tan discusses her mother's english to support the idea that the language of one's childhood is a person's deepest, truest
form of expression.

Read the passage, then answer the question that follows. no one could have seen it at the time, but the invention of beet sugar was not just a challenge to cane. it was a hint—just a glimpse, like a twist that comes about two thirds of the way through a movie—that the end of the age of sugar was in sight. for beet sugar showed that in order to create that perfect sweetness you did not need slaves, you did not need plantations, in fact you did not even need cane. beet sugar was a foreshadowing of what we have today: the age of science, in which sweetness is a product of chemistry, not whips. in 1854 only 11 percent of world sugar production came from beets. by 1899 the percentage had risen to about 65 percent. and beet sugar was just the first challenge to cane. by 1879 chemists discovered saccharine—a laboratory-created substance that is several hundred times sweeter than natural sugar. today the sweeteners used in the foods you eat may come from corn (high-fructose corn syrup), from fruit (fructose), or directly from the lab (for example, aspartame, invented in 1965, or sucralose—splenda—created in 1976). brazil is the land that imported more africans than any other to work on sugar plantations, and in brazil the soil is still perfect for sugar. cane grows in brazil today, but not always for sugar. instead, cane is often used to create ethanol, much as corn farmers in america now convert their harvest into fuel. –sugar changed the world, marc aronson and marina budhos how does this passage support the claim that sugar was tied to the struggle for freedom? it shows that the invention of beet sugar created competition for cane sugar. it shows that technology had a role in changing how we sweeten our foods. it shows that the beet sugar trade provided jobs for formerly enslaved workers. it shows that sweeteners did not need to be the product of sugar plantations and slavery.

Electronic cover letters are longer than traditional paper cover letters.

What is the meaning of 'aesthetic'?