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What Literacy Is

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Submitted By fifa99
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Reflection:

After many days thinking about this project, I had plenty of opportunities to read other people’s papers and compare them to mine. I found out that everyone is different; their views on the subject of literacy varied a lot from one person to the next. I experienced the difficulties that one encounters when you try to define such an ambiguous term. How do people set the standards for this? And how do we know which definition is the correct one if everyone will debate the term because of their different views on it. The readings helped a lot because they served as a base for my argument. Brandt is more interested in the way people view the different aspects of literacy rather than arguing the standards she would set for the term. Young and Kendall also impacted my arguments because they see literacy in a rhetoric way speaking about the importance it carries and the ambiguity it possesses as well. As hard and complex as it was for me to begin this paper, I decided to speak of literacy as a process in everyone’s life. Starting from reading and writing and ending with our employers who are most likely the ones who will be setting the standards for our literacy level. As I read, I saw that the paper wasn’t flowing smoothly and I tried focusing on transitions from one idea to another as I went on to my final draft. As I see literacy as a process that is constantly evolving and flowing through out education and our lives, I thought that my paper should also be a flowing process that allows one idea to follow another in a smooth, yet very detailed way. To conclude, I learnt a lot from this unit. I learnt that with my own experiences, much focus, and good cited quotes, I can form a strong argument that emphasizes my perspective as to what it is to be “literate”.

To Become Literate: The Process

For a while now I’ve been thinking about the term literacy.

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