Read the excerpt from "mother tongue." those tests were constructed around items like fill-in-the-blank sentence completion, such as “even though tom was mary thought he was ” and the correct answer always seemed to be the most bland combinations of thoughts, for example, “even though tom was foolish, mary thought he was ridiculous.” well, according to my mother, there were very few limitations as to what tom could have been and what mary might have thought of him. so i never did well on tests like that. which information from the excerpt best supports the inference that achievement tests ignore imagination as an element of language ability? tan’s mother would not be able to answer a question like the one described in the excerpt. tan’s mother could think of several ways to answer a question like the one described in the excerpt. tan’s mother did not allow her to take tests with questions like the one describ

The information that best supports the inference that achievement tests ignore imagination as an element of language ability is

B. Tan’s mother could think of several ways to answer a question like the one described in the excerpt.

Explanation:

In "Mother Tongue", author Amy Tan discusses the many Englishes that somehow shaped her into becoming who she is. Daughter of immigrant Chinese parents, Tan had to deal with different kinds of fluency throughout her life. Her mother, who speaks a "broken" English, is still perfectly able to communicate, even though people often choose not to understand her. Tan herself has developed the capacity to adapt her speech according to the context and occasion. She talks to her mother with one English, and to other people in another English.

When Tan mentions the English tests she had to take at school, she intends to show readers how poorly those tests actually worked in terms of assessing one's ability. They expected her to provide a certain answer to a question that could have an infinity of possible answers. Even Tan's mother, with her broken English, would have been able to provide several different combinations: "Well, according to my mother, there were very few limitations as to what Tom could have been and what Mary might have thought of him." The limitations were few, meaning the possibilities were abundant. Still, Tan performed badly on those tests because she was not allowed to use her imagination.