Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Writing & Reading (understanding literacy from a new perspective)

Yes, I wrote it backwards.

Before I came to IUP, I understood "literacy" as proficiency in reading and writing. But after my exposure to Gee, Freire & Macedo, Street, Smith, Ong, and Ohmann my previous understanding of literacy seems so insular! My comprehension now encompasses literacy as a social event (Brian Street's perspective) as well as Gee's explanation of literacy as the control of secondary discourse- I really understand what this means.

My goals as to literacy is to approach literacy not just from the written and the read word, but the social molding that contributes to that process as well as the application of that process, especially for second language learners who are literate in their own language but are "preliterate" in English.

3 comments:

Sarah Henderson Lee said...

Isn't it awesome that what we thought we knew before has had so much amazing revision in just under two weeks?!

Jessica said...

Rachel, I appreciate your reflection on your evolution of the definition of literacy. I definitely held a much more traditional view of literacy than I did several years ago.

Sabatino Mangini said...

I think your approach is right on. And everyday I am reminded how much I don't know.