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An essay on literacy
Literacy through everyday life
An essay on literacy
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Literacy between the Past and the Present
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Literacy between the Past and the Present
Introduction
The nature of literacy learning encompasses instructional techniques and pedagogy of literacy. These applications create a legacy of literacy and technology use in learning. They dominated the 20th century prompting the introduction inter-disciplinary work at the juncture created by scholarly projects and education. Over time the literacy evolved to building communication, impaction of critical thinking, and initiating creativity. The basics of literacy attract diverse educators and scholars from different fields. There is a need to capture the past ideologies that shaped literacy and the present state of the field. Therefore, this research paper explores the past and present aspects of literacy education.
Past literacy
Literacy education itself presents a contextual diversity in learning and cultural environments. When one views literacy from this point, the origin of the practice must reflect on the mind. It began back in the...
My literacy journey commenced at a young age. My story begins with the typical bed time stories and slowly progresses into complex novels. Some points in my literacy journey have made me admire the written word but other times literacy frustrated me. These ups and downs within my story have made me the person I am today. My parents noticed that my reading was not up to par with other children in kindergarten and I was diagnosed with mild dyslexia at the age of five. My parents provided me a reading mentor named Mrs. Mandeville who has shaped my literacy journey in many ways. Events in my childhood have shaped my literacy in various ways.
Jones Diaz, C. (2007). Literacy as social practice. In L. Makin, C. Jones Diaz & L. McLachlan (Eds.), Literacies in childhood: Changing views, challenging practice. (pp. 203-216).Marrickville, NSW: Elsevier.
Throughout my childhood I was never very good at reading. It was something I always struggled with and I grew to not like reading because of this. As a child my mom and dad would read books to me before I went to bed and I always enjoyed looking at the pictures and listening. Then, as I got older my mom would have me begin to read with her out loud. I did not like this because I was not a good reader and I would get so frustrated. During this time I would struggle greatly with reading the pages fluently, I also would mix up some of the letters at times. I also struggled with comprehension, as I got older. My mom would make me read the Junie B. Jones books by myself and then I would have to tell her what happened. Most
Cope, Bill, and Mary Kalantzis. Multiliteracies,Literacy learning and the design of social futures. New London Group: London and New York, 1997.
Growing up in working class family, my mom worked all the time for the living of a big family with five kids, and my dad was in re-education camp because of his association with U.S. government before 1975. My grandma was my primary guardian. “Go to study, go to read your books, read anything you like to read if you want to have a better life,” my grandma kept bouncing that phrase in my childhood. It becomes the sole rule for me to have better future. I become curious and wonder what the inside of reading and write can make my life difference. In my old days, there was no computer, no laptop, no phone…etc, to play or to spend time with, other than books. I had no other choice than read, and read and tended to dig deep in science books, math books, and chemistry books. I tended to interest in how the problem was solved. I even used my saving money to buy my own math books to read more problems and how to solve the problem. I remembered that I ended up reading the same math book as my seventh grade teacher. She used to throw the challenge questions on every quiz to pick out the brighter student. There was few students know how to solve those challenge questions. I was the one who fortunately nailed it every single time. My passion and my logic for reading and writing came to me through that experience, and also through my grandma and my mom who plant the seed in me, who want their kids to have happy and better life than they were. In my own dictionary, literacy is not just the ability to read and write, it is a strong foundation to build up the knowledge to have better life, to become who I am today.
Literature is a key component when speaking of literacy. Teachers need to provide students with endless amounts of practice experiences in reading to build their fluency rate. This should be done with different genres of texts and different levels. Reading a wide variety of literature help children develop rich vocabularies.
My relationship with literacy began when I started elementary school and that was the first starting point of my positive relationship with literacy. I really started to grow as a reader and writer throughout my middle school and high school years. Throughout my years of going to school I had many positive experiences that shaped my view of literacy today. My literacy skills have also enhanced throughout my educational years.
Tompkins, G. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach. (5th ed., pp. 12-286). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.
My classes centered around student production; however, it soon became clear to me that a culture that values talking above doing is going to struggle with creative expression through devalued mediums. At what point do our working definitions of literacy need to progress as the technologies we use progress? Is access to technology a human right? As immersive technologies make concrete the once abstract, will we change the ways we assess?
Winch, G., & Ross Johnston, R., & March, P., & Ljungdahl, L., & Holliday, M. (2010). Literacy: Reading, writing and children’s literacy (4th ed.). South Melbourne VIC: Oxford university press.
There are times, we have the tendency to make things more difficult than they need to be. This can be the case when it comes to teaching literacy development in children. In this case, "the alphabetic principle is the understanding that words consist of letters that correspond to sounds" (Coats, 2013). That's it. We need to figure out ways that allow children to best learn this. I like the approach of teaching children different words and then play off those words by changing the first letter(s) to make a rhyming word. When children see how easily this can be done, they will quickly begin to associate the sounds the letters make with their visual recognition of the letters.
Is it important to be a literate person in today’s society? The ability to function well depends on whether or not a person is literate and can comprehend what is going on around them. If a person doesn’t have the basic ability to read, they will feel the stress and dependency on others because of their illiteracy. Illiteracy is a big problem because without the knowledge of reading, illiterate people can’t perform daily tasks and responsibilities in daily life. When all it would take is a mere two minutes out of your day, don’t you think illiteracy can be helped or even extinguished?
An decline has occurred in the amount of time young people spend reading. The loss of interest in teenagers for reading has resulted from the invention of the moving picture. No longer do teenagers open their imaginations to create a vision of stories portrayed in books. The visions have already been provided for them in the forms of movies, video games, and television.
Literacy and literature are interdependently linked in society as individuals engaging in quality literature can help build effective literacy skills and knowledge. Literature is everywhere and are a large part of most cultures. Engaging with this literature aids with understanding cultural values in society. For an individual to function fully in society, solid literacy skills are crucial. Due to the importance of literacy in society, many theorist have developed theories to how humans acquire language. Literacy, literature and language acquisition are all important in understanding learning.
I have learned to rely on the Internet for my researches and I knew that I could write creatively, or express my own opinion, in a manner more persuasive than working on it using the traditional literacy methods. Using the computer before was introduced to me as a tool for learning by educational games and computer programs, but as times passed the use of the computer for learning became the available tool for me that have cultivated my love for reading and writing. Blogging is writing which is a fun and great way to encourage creativity without any binding rules for a contemporary student like me that is full of emotions, arguments and ideas that I cannot express in formal academic writing. Integrating new literacy particularly technologically into the classroom is a smart move to implement a positive interaction with much gusto. At first, I thought that this major development would lead to my education’s trend towards reading and writing even less, but the new approach to literacy keeps me happy and comfortable, and even make me do logical and cohesive writing. Blogging is a useful tool for my inability to think critically and write persuasively. I do believe though that there is value in the traditional as well as the new literacy...