Can you define literacy?

Literacy is one’s ability to communicate with others using speech, hearing, sight, writing, and/or reading. From this, we try to construct meaning and understanding. No one individual are the same. How we communicate varies with people and cultures. So why is the term literacy of great debate today? Although there still is not a clear definition as to which practices are most effective to teaching literacy, we must begin by looking at each individual child needs and tailor to them as educators. We must not look at literacy as a one size fits all approach but in fact remember there are multiple literacies. These multiple literacies are a combination of various things that constitute for an individual’s literacy. Hence, if we live in a diverse society one would encounter various community and cultures right? So why not prepare our future leaders to be multifaceted in these different settings by having them be engaged and immersed in it? Theorist Bloome and Ensisco argue this point, in the article “Looking Out Across Columbus: What we Mean by Multiple Literacies”. If we want our students to participate in our society, they must articulate multiple literacies. Because they will be required to engage in various settings, often requiring them to differentiate their language, they must be educated on the following...

· Recognition of the diversity of ways written language is used by people across social institutions, communities, and social situations;

· Recognition that student must understand both how to adopt extant literacy practices and how to adapt them to new situations and needs;

· Recognition that students must understand how literacy practices connect social institutions with each other, local contexts with national and global contexts; and,

· Recognition that how literacy practices are structures and how they provide meaning constructs social relationships among people and social groups, as well as provides social identities to individuals” ( Bloome and Ensisco 298).

I am open to James Paul Gee’s term of Social Languages. According to Gee, Social languages are “distinctive in that they are used to enact, recognize, and negotiate different situated identities and to carry out different socially situated activities”. For example, there are different cultures like hip hop that require not only a specific language but you must have a distinct demeanor to activity participate in that culture.

According to a study presented by Gee in his article, “Teenagers in new times: A new literacy studies perspective”, students from low economic backgrounds were unable to “actively recruit distinctive oral and written social languages for leaning within socioculturally recognizable and meaningful academic Discourses” because they are at a disadvantage and never taught at home. Having the ability to change ones language in different social settings is also known by Lisa Delpit as “code switch”. A way we might help poor children who are unable to actively “code switch” is possibly by considering the criteria’s mentioned above as well as teaching students the various “kinds of English”. Maybe if educators were open to and accepting of a student’s home language and given reasons and explanations as to when it is appropriate to use each language, is the child more aware of how society runs.