What Is Literacy

What is Literacy?

I’m going to start this paper on literacy by first taking a look at my personal experiences and how literacy affected me. When I began to write I stopped and asked my mother if she remembered when I began to read. She told me that I started reading at the age of three. I thought “WOW” I knew I was a genius. She said that she had a nursery rhyme book and she would read it to me every night. My favorite poem was “Jack and

Jill.” My mother said that I would have her read that poem over and over and over again to me every night before I went to sleep. She read it to me so much and so often that pretty soon I was able to read it myself. Now, I know that I wasn’t actually reading and I wasn’t exactly a genius, but I was smart. What I was doing as a three year old was repeating back the story that I had heard a hundred times. I had memorized the poem but

I wasn’t really reading. My mom would tell me that I was the smartest little girl in the world, and I believed it. So, when I started going to school my mom was one of those parents that took me to school on the first day and told me teacher that I already knew how to read. What does literacy mean to me? Literacy means being read to and understanding a story. Not just understanding it, but being able to tell you the story back in your own words. Comprehending what you have read.

My own first memory of literacy was at my babysitter’s house before I started going to school. She had a chalkboard that had wheels on the bottom. I would roll out the chalkboard everyday. At the bottom of the chalkboard was the alphabet. Every day I would play like I was a teacher and sing, say, and teach my dolls the alphabet copying it from the bottom of the board. One day I got there and began to roll out the chalkboard and all my students (dolls), and I noticed that my babysitter had covered up the alphabet at the bottom so that I couldn’t see it anymore. She told me that I needed to learn them and not just copy. When she did that I realized that I didn’t really know my alphabet.

What is literacy to me? Literacy is reading and writing. You have to be able to form letters to make words, and form words to make sentences, and form sentences to write down information. Literacy is the art of being able to clearly translate what is being communicated into written form.

Another fond memory of my young literacy experience was being in kindergarten with Mrs. Brown as my teacher. Mrs. Brown’s old student, who was now if the first grade, would come back to my class and read a book to us every now that then. I loved hearing her read. I would see myself in her when I listened to her read. I told myself that I wanted to do that when I got to the first grade. So when I finally got to the first grade I would try really hard to read a book and prove to my first grade teacher that I could. And then she would allow me to go to Mrs. Brown’s room and read to her new class. That was motivation to me. I didn’t need candy, stickers or any type of incentive to read or learn how to read. I just wanted to read to people. It’s really funny now that I look back at this because now, my job is to read to people every single day. What is literacy to me? Literacy is being able to read and read to others.

So defining literacy can get difficult. But I decided to see what Webster dictionary thought. Webster says literacy is the quality or state of being literate. Well what is literate? Webster also says that literate means being able to read and write. The antonym to literacy is illiteracy, the inability to read and write. I believe there are so many different forms of literacy. Traditionally, the term literacy was used to discuss a person’s ability to create or interpret the printed word.

However, literacy can also be used to discuss the ability to work with certain kinds of codes. For example, a scholar of English literature is clearly literate. However, she might not be able to understand computer code. In terms of computer code then, the scholar is illiterate. The definition of literacy has evolved from "the ability to read and use printed materials at an extremely basic level" to "using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals and to develop one's knowledge and potential"

(2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy).

A mother's literacy level is one of the most significant predictors of a child's future literacy, more significant than income level and employment status. (Pennsylvania

State Literacy Survey, Education Testing Service, 1995). I believe that education is so important to mothers and children. When a mother is educated it gives children a step ahead of others. It seems that when a mother is educated she knows what her child needs in order to succeed in school. She knows that she needs to read to her child, and sing

ABC’s. Just offering a print rich environment to your child gives them so much more of an opportunity to succeed.

What about people in a community or a neighborhood? People should be able to live and communicate with others. I believe that in order for a person to be able to operate in a community they will need to have the basic reading skills. They will also need to know the language spoken in the community. In order to communicate properly it is important that a person can communicate. That’s not to say that if someone doesn’t have these basic literacy skills that they cant survive. But it would make it a lot easier to communicate and get things that you need and want. People will be more successful if they have those minimum basic skills. There are so many other types of literacy such as family, health, financial, and computer. To be a productive part of the society it is very important to have these literacy’s in place. The way that technology is influencing our everyday life, it is almost critical to be computer literate in some way. From checking email, to “blogging” and face book pages, people are not communicating as much verbally but using technology to still get the things they need and want.

Literacy is made up of not only reading and writing but also includes technology, and many more. Literacy was introduced to me at a very young age. My mother said that she read to me when I was in her tummy. So I have been influenced by literacy before I was born. Well I guess all of us have been influenced by literacy before we were born. Many people were influenced in a good way and some in a bad way. I grew up in a literacy rich environment and that helped me make a smooth transition into reading. In today’s society being illiterate brings the name of poor and unclean. Literacy to me is giving children opportunities to read and surrounding them with books and words.

Literacy is your world, literacy is your health, and literacy is your future!

N a t i o n a l c e n t e r f o r e d u c a t i o n s t a t i s t i c s . ( 2 0 0 3 ) . N a t i o n a l

A s s e s s m e n t o f A d u l t L i t e r a c y ,

P e n n s y l v a n i a s t a t e l i t e r a c y s u r v e y. ( 1 9 9 5 ) . E d u c a t i o n Te s t i n g

S e r v i c e ,