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last.updated 9.7.09

 

What is Literacy?


Purpose

Throughout the century there have been competing arguments about what literacy is, what literacy does, and what literacy should be. We will begin to begin to address these issues and think about there applicability to English Studies.


Discussion I

As a class we will discuss the strategies you used to read and understand these texts.

  • What strategies do you use to understand the scholarship?
  • What do you do when you do not understand something you read?

Discussion II

Ong, Olson, and Scribner & Cole provide fairly clinical explanations of literacy. We will discuss the following:

  • What questions do you have about these texts?
  • What are their arguments?
  • Ong and Olson mostly disagree on the relationship between speech and writing? Where do you position yourself in this debate? How is this relationship significant to English Studies?
  • Although Scribner and Cole position their implications outside of the classroom? Are their implications applicable to the English Studies classroom, especially considering the ways the classroom is being conceived at more progressive institutions?

Discussion III

Wysocki and Johnson-Eilola question the ways that literacy is appropriated as a metaphor, especially in terms of technology education. We will discuss the following:

  • What questions do you have about this article?
  • What are their arguments?
  • What other knowledges in English Studies should we cautiously attach "literacy" to?

Activity I: What does it mean to be literate in English Studies?

You all will be divided into three groups–some using IM–and given 25 minutes to discuss the following question: What does it mean to be be literate in English Studies? Another way to think about this question is to ask yourselves: What literacies should students who earn a BA in English Studies have learned by the time they graduate? Also address the question: How does this differ from what it means to be literate after earning one's undergraduate degree?

To answer this question, your group should contextualize your English Department. Your group will want to answer...

  • What type of institution are you at?
  • How does your English Department define English Studies? (You may choose to look at some programs to get an idea, but don't spend a lot of your time doing this).

Take notes on what your group discusses and be prepared to talk about it during the last part of class.