What Literacy Means to Me
Maxine Holliness
ENG 1100
Professor Wooten
December 3, 2012
What literacy means for me and the impact that it has had on my life.
Literacy refers to the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently, and think critically about the written word. The primary sense of literacy still represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from a critical interpretation of the written or printed text. Key to all literacy is reading development, a progression of skills that begins with the ability to understand spoken words and decode written words, and culminates in the deep understanding of text. Literacy is taught through parents by making reading to your child a regular part of your daily schedule, just as my mother did when I was younger. She would read both early readers and chapter books to me. When reading, she would point to the words as she said them and read slowly. This allowed me to read along with her. Once she noticed that I understood certain words, such as the word "the," my mother would let me say that word a few times when it appears in the story. This method taught me to be quite an advanced reader by the age of 5 and was heading into kindergarten.
The definition of literacy is a difficult one to answer. When the word literacy comes to mind I think of it first in basic terms of just being able to read, but I know it contains more elements of being just able to read. In my mind literacy as a whole defines the relationship that people have with literature. Just like the way my mother taught me the love of reading, which has continued to grow as I've aged and encouraged me to develop a love for chapter books and the stories depicted in them. I find myself becoming engrossed in these stories and sometimes even comparing them to my own life experiences.
Literacy as a whole means the relationship with different types of literature and how well people can comprehend them. There is the basic standard of literacy which would be reading.
ENG 1100
Professor Wooten
December 3, 2012
What literacy means for me and the impact that it has had on my life.
Literacy refers to the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently, and think critically about the written word. The primary sense of literacy still represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from a critical interpretation of the written or printed text. Key to all literacy is reading development, a progression of skills that begins with the ability to understand spoken words and decode written words, and culminates in the deep understanding of text. Literacy is taught through parents by making reading to your child a regular part of your daily schedule, just as my mother did when I was younger. She would read both early readers and chapter books to me. When reading, she would point to the words as she said them and read slowly. This allowed me to read along with her. Once she noticed that I understood certain words, such as the word "the," my mother would let me say that word a few times when it appears in the story. This method taught me to be quite an advanced reader by the age of 5 and was heading into kindergarten.
The definition of literacy is a difficult one to answer. When the word literacy comes to mind I think of it first in basic terms of just being able to read, but I know it contains more elements of being just able to read. In my mind literacy as a whole defines the relationship that people have with literature. Just like the way my mother taught me the love of reading, which has continued to grow as I've aged and encouraged me to develop a love for chapter books and the stories depicted in them. I find myself becoming engrossed in these stories and sometimes even comparing them to my own life experiences.
Literacy as a whole means the relationship with different types of literature and how well people can comprehend them. There is the basic standard of literacy which would be reading.