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I have been struggling with literacy, both as a concept and theory.

The literature on literacy is very broad, it seems quite all-encompassing, so I am struggling to make sense of literacy in any useful sense at all. At the moment, I tend to think of literacy as a summary of the specific skills of reading, writing, speaking, etc. But I find whenever I come across any discussion or examination of literacy instead of those specific skills, I find myself really distracted and I believe does a disservice to the skills acquisition aspects of language teaching and learning.

I am really interested in whether there are any examples or thoughts on how literacy has been useful in language learning or teaching, especially to you personally or in the literature. I am hoping there is a more pragmatic application of literacy but I am struggling to find it.

Poidah
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  • Have you found any review articles or introductory books on the matter? – Tommi Nov 16 '20 at 07:43
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    I have searched extensively, but what I have found tends to break down into the various skills. Maybe literacy specialist teachers have been useful as a strategy, there were a couple of papers on that. – Poidah Nov 16 '20 at 12:05
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    I think the best overview of the evolution of literacy is Unrau's 2013 chapter - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300043247 – Poidah Nov 17 '20 at 01:17
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    UNESCO has the broadest view of literacy and has a great series of papers that run through their logic - https://en.unesco.org/themes/literacy – Poidah Nov 17 '20 at 01:19
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    But in the end it is books like Munger's 2016 that breaks down literacy into its component skills that seems to really ties literacy together - https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/steps-to-success/chapter/1-a-brief-introduction-to-literacy/ – Poidah Nov 17 '20 at 01:21
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    This sounds like you are one of the most qualified people to answer your own question. – Tommi Nov 17 '20 at 07:12
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    Thanks Tommi :) But I am hoping that others may have a nicer more practical interpretation of literacy in spite of what is currently written out there. It would be nice to really make coherent sense of it all. Literacy is so important, but its poor conceptualisation contributes to ongoing poor outcome imo. – Poidah Nov 17 '20 at 07:28
  • literacy and numeracy: last time I checked literacy meant being able to read and write. Numeracy is being able to do arithmetic. Illiterate people already speak and can listen to their own language. – Lambie Aug 20 '21 at 16:29
  • How about to speak and comprehend? – Poidah Aug 20 '21 at 16:32
  • People who are illiterate can already speak and comprehend their own language. In Romance languages, the term is very clear: analfabeto (Spanish) = lacking the "alphabet". Can't read or write. – Lambie Aug 20 '21 at 16:36
  • Generally, if you are teaching people another language, they can already read and write their own language.... – Lambie Aug 20 '21 at 16:44
  • https://dataworks-ed.com/blog/2016/02/six-components-of-an-effective-literacy-program/A literacy program contains all the components necessary for you to master reading and writing. – Lambie Aug 20 '21 at 16:46
  • No surprise then speaking and comprehensibility is not considered – Poidah Aug 20 '21 at 16:50
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    I wonder if you could edit your question to clarify whether you are referring to literacy in the context of native language learning and teaching or foreign language learning and teaching. If you want to know about both, please focus the current question on one of these and post a separate question about the other aspect. – Tsundoku Sep 16 '22 at 15:07

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literacy is generally understood to mean reading and writing one's own language, not a foreign one.

It involves two skills: reading and writing

Learning a foreign language, involves four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. But when a person learns a foreign language, they are usually literate in their own language, unless they are learning by ear, which can happen, just like a person learning a musical instrument by ear and not by learning any music theory.

This is a basic definition of literacy on which all teachers and educators would agree. It is not controversial...

Of course, there is also foreign language literacy, being able to read and write a foreign language.

literacy/illiteracy numeracy/innumeracy

Lambie
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The problem with literacy as a useful teaching concept is that there is a lack of conceptual coherence.

Murphy's and Medin's seminal 1985 paper on conceptual coherence applies to literacy due to the lack of constraints of literacy's attributes and literacy's inability to detect important correlations. Is reading literacy? Is speaking literacy? What aspects are literacy and what are not? Whose definition of literacy do you prefer?

The lack of well defined attributes and features within the literacy concept makes it a very unhelpful concept, especially in language teaching practice. Literacy is a great concept for broad strokes discussion that massacre generalisation, cue in the media and political leaders with their simplistic solutions...

Poidah
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