“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge,” said by a famous American novelist, George R.R. Martin. Personally, I couldn’t agree more with this quote. Books are always being with me throughout my life. My literacy journey started when I was nine years old. I started with some simple Dairy and short stories.…
In the reading, The Sponsors of Literacy by Deborah Brandt she talks about how literacy was received and withheld from people because of socio-economic classes. Brandt claims that there is a connection between literacy and economic development or as she refers to them as sponsors of literacy which can either help, sensor, or withhold all together the ability to be literate. Literacy provides an upward mobility or at least the means to move upward in social classes and without literacy there is no means to gain an edge. In her interviews of Raymond Branch (European American) and Dora Lopez (Mexican American) Brandt found that even though both were born in the same year and had moved to the same town when they were younger Branch was introduced…
Objective: The student will be able to select important events to orally retell a story using the “Uh-oh . . . Phew” strategy.…
The author,Dana Gioia is trying to explains why literatures matter are important to social and our life also the author builds his argument to persuasive audiences that the decline of reading in America will give us a negative effect, he used “ 2002 survey of public participation of the Arts” to show our situations that declining rates of literature among younger adults are still continue and emphasize that declining rates will have on a negative effect on our society The words “young people do not understand the ideas of citizenship ...and thier appreciation that support of American democracy is limited” tells the audiences that our indifferent about reading literature of historical and political “ awareness” amoung young people and more…
They found that literacy readers are markedly more civically engaged than non-readers, they scored two to four times more likely to do charity work, etc. A reason for their higher social and cultural interactions may be because of their historical knowledge that comes with literary reading. This information provides a logical reason for readers to find credence in the author's claims.…
Envision a world where people refused to read. The world would not be as great of a place. The extensive increase in readers might force this to occur. In “Reading is in Painful Decline” by Stephen L. Carter, the author justifies how the decline is negatively affecting the country. Carter uses a wide variety of rhetoric to persuade the reader that the decline in reading is causing many of the country’s problems.…
The idea of reading has become very unpopular to many people across the world over the past few decades. According to Jordan Weissmann, the author of the article, “The Decline of the American Book Lover”, many people of our generation have stopped reading and have become unintelligent. She says, “The Pew Research Center reported last week that nearly a quarter of American adults had not read a single book in the past year. As in, they hadn't cracked a paperback, fired up a Kindle, or even hit play on an audiobook while in the car. The number of non-book-readers has nearly tripled since 1978”( Weissman). Books provide something that nothing else could ever provide, knowledge. Many could argue that if teachers provide and give us education, what's the point of reading a book? They have forgotten that the only way teachers could’ve gotten the knowledge to teach us is by reading books. Not having books in our society is almost like not having food. It is an essential quality that us humans must have. Similarly. Montag's society almost resembles our current world. Books have been ignored by many people of our generation and nobody has done anything about it. However unlike Montag's society, people of our generation haven’t outlawed reading. They still read books, and it creates a perfect chance to put an end to the extinction of…
I’ve always had the desire to write beautifully, from penmanship to placement and flow of the words. I remember getting birthday cards from my Granny with elegant cursive writing. Attracted to the way each word blended so smooth and soft, I would get a piece of paper and mimic the slants of each word connecting each letter, more like one lowercase “l” after another, to the next. One day I’d be able to spell the words in my mind, and until that day I’d practice my “cursive” one squiggly line at a time.…
For years child abuse has occurred in real life, and continues to happen in today’s society. David Klass brings up this issue in his novel “You don’t know me”. The setting of the novel takes place at John’s home, and in his school. It begins with the main character named John, who is an emotionally and physically abused boy that feels misunderstood and alone. David Klass uses John as a troubled teenager to show a realistic depiction of how abuse can and does happen.…
More and more people each day are becoming illiterate which is hurting America in every aspect. When people can’t read or write it effects the society as a whole just not themselves, because they have to rely on everyone else to do things for them. Society as whole is being effected by illiteracy, by others not knowing how to read and write, every negative effect hurts America and it will continue until something…
When you hear the word literacy what comes to mind? Do you think of words or school or horrible comprehension tests? When I hear the word literacy none of the above is what comes to my mind. I think of when I was young, no more than five, and I would sit on my grandmother’s warm lap wrapped up in her arms that seemed to protect me from any and everything while she read to me. I think of the struggle and the many trials it took to spell and write my own name, but also relishing in the sense of accomplishment I felt. I think of the times I read along to books my mother would read to my sisters and me until I could read them on my own. Finally, I think of the smiles and proud looks on my parents’ and grandparents’ faces when ever I would show…
Growing up in a bilingual household has affected my literacy journey. It affected my Spanish writing because I focused more on English. This course has helped me look at English literacy beyond the point of it being another credit to simply cross off my list. A specific reading from this course that I was able to really retain and relate to was Victor Villanueva's excerpt from Bootstraps: From an Academic of Color. Here he brought up several points that made me think differently about literacy and how it can affect my life now or even after college. “One professor said my writing was too formulaic. One professor said it was to novel. Another wrote: ‘nonsense.’ “ (Villanueva 112) I really like this quote because relating it back to literacy and my college experience ahead of me, it makes me understand that there will be times…
Before the perfection of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, books were copied by hand- taking extreme amounts of time as well as effort. This made books highly expensive and only affordable by the clergy. As a result, education was scarce and only a small percentage of people in the world were literate (“Renaissance- Printing and Thinking”). When Gutenberg’s printing press came into use however, books could be printed more quickly and efficiently, and they therefore became much cheaper. Common people could then afford books, which led to a higher literacy rate (“The State of Publishing: Literacy Rates”). Not only were books made more available, but the language they were written in also allowed more people to read them. Before the printing press, most books were written and copied in Latin, but as books began to be printed, middle classes demanded works in the language of the nation, as well as in their own languages. This made books readable by anyone who was, or became, literate (Shilling, pars. 3-4).…
My literacy journey had a very interesting beginning. I am a first generation Mexican American, and as being first generation my first language is Spanish, everyone I interacted with when I was young was family or Hispanic. I picked up on some English from watching kid shows but I never really knew what the words meant. Prior to starting preschool, the school got me and my mother into an ELL summer class to get a head start on the school year. Up until around first grade or so I always had to meet with the ELL teacher to check on my progress and make sure I was doing okay in school.…
As we continue to discover and invent new technologies and sciences, people have progressively become mentally confined and have lost the ability to individually think and analyze. A particularly deleterious trend that has been plaguing our society is the decline of questioning and analysis of our world – what we hear, what we see, what we learn, etc. The American populace is thinking and analyzing less; they are now used to having the media feed them not only current information and news, but also provide them with a so-called analysis of that or stuff their minds with catchy advertising that prohibits thought. As we become more mechanized, technological, specialized and money-focused, we tend to de-emphasize the studies of history, culture, philosophy, and humanities. This has led to a state of critical philosophical illiteracy and ignorance regarding history, other countries, different people, and varying ideas in our culture. This weakens our societal structure since we see so little of the big picture that is the world today. Without the broad exposure to the world of ideas, we have limited mental tools for seeing contemporary situations in the proper context. Our viewpoints and behaviors tend to be more narrow and self-serving and we see alternative forms of expression as being "bad", "boring", or "strange" instead of interesting. Our tolerance for variety is diminished and our judgmental natures are reinforced. In effect, the lack of philosophy, caused by the overbearing role of media, in our culture leaves us our nation divided, depressed, and dismally near failure.…