I are literate?

What are the roles of a literate person, how can we gauge literacy skills in a person and what model do we have to follow. This is what was discussed in this workshop and it was interesting to see the skills broken down into four distinct categories.

These four roles of a literate person are broken down into the following

1. Code Breaker
2. Meaning Maker
3. Text User
4. Text Analyst

The first role of code breaker is through the ability to be able to encode or decode tests by recognising the shape and structure and using the appropriate strategies to make meaning from the text. They know the grammar skills and the spelling sskills to be able to recognise the text. If I could put this into a context, then I think of situations where I am able to read a Japaese word sentence, however, I am not yet able to understand what it actually means until I have been told what the combination of letters and sounds make in meaning. This is often done on many levels and it occurs beyond the task of reading words. After all, letters are just images and thus, all images have the potential to carry meaning. The meanings that we make from such images require us to code break and use cultural informed meanings to interpret them. Therefore, this is the first step that leads us to the idea of the meaning maker.

Meaning makers can draw meanings from a text based on contextual understandings and are able to extrapolate meaning from the text. For example the next step in learning Japanese. I would be able to read a sentence and then understand the meaning that is attached to the sounds that are coming from my mouth. Furthermore, Other people are able to make meaning from the sounds that are coming from my mouth. This is where communication begins, as the idea of sharing meanings is what communication is all about.

The third role of literate person comes in the form of the text user. A text user is able to read or write a text appropriately. They can recognise the genre and conventions that go into creating that text. What separates a reflection form an academic essay? A text user knows the conventions that are appropriate to certain text types. Furthermore, a text user has the ability to transfer that information across different genres and mediums. For example, this can be done simply as paraphrasing or shortening an idea.

Finally, the last role is the text analyst. As a language teacher, my goal is to bring students to a level of proficiency where they can analyse texts and see beyond the immediate ideas presented before them. I want students to draw from their own experiences and draw from other sources of information to form their own critical analysis of a text. Rather than accepting a text for what it is, students should be able to see the purpose of a text and understand how it was constructed and the purpose for its construction.

There’s an episode of the Simpsons where Homer gets a crayon that was lodged in his brain removed, and this makes him smarter. I’d like to think of school and the development of critical literacy as the process of removing that crayon. Usually when a person becomes critically aware, they can never return. It’s a double edged sword. Sometimes I just want to enjoy my scary movies and not over analyse things…

Most of this information can be found here as well if my explanation did not make sense:

http://www.decs.sa.gov.au/thenetwork/files/pages/identity_web/LiteracyAsASocialPractice/Fouroles.pdf