essay on literacy meaning

Chapter 1. What is Literacy? Multiple Perspectives on Literacy

Constance Beecher

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” – Frederick Douglass

Download Tar Beach – Faith Ringgold Video Transcript [DOC]

Keywords: literacy, digital literacy, critical literacy, community-based literacies

Definitions of literacy from multiple perspectives

Literacy is the cornerstone of education by any definition. Literacy refers to the ability of people to read and write (UNESCO, 2017). Reading and writing in turn are about encoding and decoding information between written symbols and sound (Resnick, 1983; Tyner, 1998). More specifically, literacy is the ability to understand the relationship between sounds and written words such that one may read, say, and understand them (UNESCO, 2004; Vlieghe, 2015). About 67 percent of children nationwide, and more than 80 percent of those from families with low incomes, are not proficient readers by the end of third grade ( The Nation Assessment for Educational Progress; NAEP 2022 ).  Children who are not reading on grade level by third grade are 4 times more likely to drop out of school than their peers who are reading on grade level. A large body of research clearly demonstrates that Americans with fewer years of education have poorer health and shorter lives. In fact, since the 1990s, life expectancy has fallen for people without a high school education. Completing more years of education creates better access to health insurance, medical care, and the resources for living a healthier life (Saha, 2006). Americans with less education face higher rates of illness, higher rates of disability, and shorter life expectancies. In the U.S., 25-year-olds without a high school diploma can expect to die 9 years sooner than college graduates. For example, by 2011, the prevalence of diabetes had reached 15% for adults without a high -school education, compared with 7% for college graduates (Zimmerman et al., 2018).

Thus, literacy is a goal of utmost importance to society. But what does it mean to be literate, or to be able to read? What counts as literacy?

Learning Objectives

• Describe two or more definitions of literacy and the differences between them.
• Define digital and critical literacy.
• Distinguish between digital literacy, critical literacy, and community-based literacies.
• Explain multiple perspectives on literacy.

Here are some definitions to consider:

“Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society.” – United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

“The ability to understand, use, and respond appropriately to written texts.” – National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), citing the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)

“An individual’s ability to read, write, and speak in English, compute, and solve problems, at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the family of the individual, and in society.” – Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), Section 203

“The ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society.” – Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), as cited by the American Library Association’s Committee on Literacy

“Using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.” – Kutner, Greenberg, Jin, Boyle, Hsu, & Dunleavy (2007). Literacy in Everyday Life: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NCES 2007-480)

Which one of these above definitions resonates with you? Why?

New literacy practices as meaning-making practices

In the 21 st century, literacy increasingly includes understanding the roles of digital media and technology in literacy. In 1996, the New London Group coined the term “multiliteracies” or “new literacies” to describe a modern view of literacy that reflected multiple communication forms and contexts of cultural and linguistic diversity within a globalized society. They defined multiliteracies as a combination of multiple ways of communicating and making meaning, including such modes as visual, audio, spatial, behavioral, and gestural (New London Group, 1996). Most of the text’s students come across today are digital (like this textbook!). Instead of books and magazines, students are reading blogs and text messages.

For a short video on the importance of digital literacy, watch The New Media Literacies .

The National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE, 2019) makes it clear that our definitions of literacy must continue to evolve and grow ( NCTE definition of digital literacy ).

“Literacy has always been a collection of communicative and sociocultural practices shared among communities. As society and technology change, so does literacy. The world demands that a literate person possess and intentionally apply a wide range of skills, competencies, and dispositions. These literacies are interconnected, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with histories, narratives, life possibilities, and social trajectories of all individuals and groups. Active, successful participants in a global society must be able to:

• participate effectively and critically in a networked world.
• explore and engage critically and thoughtfully across a wide variety of inclusive texts and tools/modalities.
• consume, curate, and create actively across contexts.
• advocate for equitable access to and accessibility of texts, tools, and information.
• build and sustain intentional global and cross-cultural connections and relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought.
• promote culturally sustaining communication and recognize the bias and privilege present in the interactions.
• examine the rights, responsibilities, and ethical implications of the use and creation of information.
• determine how and to what extent texts and tools amplify one’s own and others’ narratives as well as counterproductive narratives.
• recognize and honor the multilingual literacy identities and culture experiences individuals bring to learning environments, and provide opportunities to promote, amplify, and encourage these variations of language (e.g., dialect, jargon, and register).”

In other words, literacy is not just the ability to read and write. It is also being able to effectively use digital technology to find and analyze information. Students who are digitally literate know how to do research, find reliable sources, and make judgments about what they read online and in print. Next, we will learn more about digital literacy.

• Malleable : can be changed.
• Culturally sustaining : the pedagogical preservation of the cultural and linguistic competence of young people pertaining to their communities of origin while simultaneously affording dominant-culture competence.
• Bias : a tendency to believe that some people, ideas, etc., are better than others, usually resulting in unfair treatment.
• Privilege : a right or benefit that is given to some people and not to others.
• Unproductive narrative : negative commonly held beliefs such as “all students from low-income backgrounds will struggle in school.” (Narratives are phrases or ideas that are repeated over and over and become “shared narratives.” You can spot them in common expressions and stories that almost everyone knows and holds as ingrained values or beliefs.)

Literacy in the digital age

The Iowa Core recognizes that today, literacy includes technology. The goal for students who graduate from the public education system in Iowa is:

“Each Iowa student will be empowered with the technological knowledge and skills to learn effectively and live productively. This vision, developed by the Iowa Core 21st Century Skills Committee, reflects the fact that Iowans in the 21st century live in a global environment marked by a high use of technology, giving citizens and workers the ability to collaborate and make individual contributions as never before. Iowa’s students live in a media-suffused environment, marked by access to an abundance of information and rapidly changing technological tools useful for critical thinking and problem-solving processes. Therefore, technological literacy supports preparation of students as global citizens capable of self-directed learning in preparation for an ever-changing world” (Iowa Core Standards 21 st Century Skills, n.d.).

NOTE: The essential concepts and skills of technology literacy are taken from the International Society for Technology in Education’s National Educational Technology Standards for Students: Grades K-2 | Technology Literacy Standards

Literacy in any context is defined as the ability “ to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information in order to function in a knowledge society” (ICT Literacy Panel, 2002). “ When we teach only for facts (specifics)… rather than for how to go beyond facts, we teach students how to get out of date ” (Sternberg, 2008). This statement is particularly significant when applied to technology literacy. The Iowa essential concepts for technology literacy reflect broad, universal processes and skills.

Unlike the previous generations, learning in the digital age is marked using rapidly evolving technology, a deluge of information, and a highly networked global community (Dede, 2010). In such a dynamic environment, learners need skills beyond the basic cognitive ability to consume and process language. To understand the characteristics of the digital age, and what this means for how people learn in this new and changing landscape, one may turn to the evolving discussion of literacy or, as one might say now, of digital literacy. The history of literacy contextualizes digital literacy and illustrates changes in literacy over time. By looking at literacy as an evolving historical phenomenon, we can glean the fundamental characteristics of the digital age. These characteristics in turn illuminate the skills needed to take advantage of digital environments. The following discussion is an overview of digital literacy, its essential components, and why it is important for learning in the digital age.

Literacy is often considered a skill or competency. Children and adults alike can spend years developing the appropriate skills for encoding and decoding information. Over the course of thousands of years, literacy has become much more common and widespread, with a global literacy rate ranging from 81% to 90% depending on age and gender (UNESCO, 2016). From a time when literacy was the domain of an elite few, it has grown to include huge swaths of the global population. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which are some of the advantages the written word can provide. Kaestle (1985) tells us that “literacy makes it possible to preserve information as a snapshot in time, allows for recording, tracking and remembering information, and sharing information more easily across distances among others” (p. 16). In short, literacy led “to the replacement of myth by history and the replacement of magic by skepticism and science.”

If literacy involves the skills of reading and writing, digital literacy requires the ability to extend those skills to effectively take advantage of the digital world (American Library Association [ALA], 2013). More general definitions express digital literacy as the ability to read and understand information from digital sources as well as to create information in various digital formats (Bawden, 2008; Gilster, 1997; Tyner, 1998; UNESCO, 2004). Developing digital skills allows digital learners to manage a vast array of rapidly changing information and is key to both learning and working in the evolving digital landscape (Dede, 2010; Koltay, 2011; Mohammadyari & Singh, 2015). As such, it is important for people to develop certain competencies specifically for handling digital content.

ALA Digital Literacy Framework

To fully understand the many digital literacies, we will look at the American Library Association (ALA) framework. The ALA framework is laid out in terms of basic functions with enough specificity to make it easy to understand and remember but broad enough to cover a wide range of skills. The ALA framework includes the following areas:

• understanding,
• evaluating,
• creating, and
• communicating (American Library Association, 2013).

Finding information in a digital environment represents a significant departure from the way human beings have searched for information for centuries. The learner must abandon older linear or sequential approaches to finding information such as reading a book, using a card catalog, index, or table of contents, and instead use more horizontal approaches like natural language searches, hypermedia text, keywords, search engines, online databases and so on (Dede, 2010; Eshet, 2002). The shift involves developing the ability to create meaningful search limits (SCONUL, 2016). Previously, finding the information would have meant simply looking up page numbers based on an index or sorting through a card catalog. Although finding information may depend to some degree on the search tool being used (library, internet search engine, online database, etc.) the search results also depend on how well a person is able to generate appropriate keywords and construct useful Boolean searches. Failure in these two areas could easily return too many results to be helpful, vague, or generic results, or potentially no useful results at all (Hangen, 2015).

Part of the challenge of finding information is the ability to manage the results. Because there is so much data, changing so quickly, in so many different formats, it can be challenging to organize and store them in such a way as to be useful. SCONUL (2016) talks about this as the ability to organize, store, manage, and cite digital resources, while the Educational Testing Service also specifically mentions the skills of accessing and managing information. Some ways to accomplish these tasks is using social bookmarking tools such as Diigo, clipping and organizing software such as Evernote and OneNote, and bibliographic software. Many sites, such as YouTube, allow individuals with an account to bookmark videos, as well as create channels or collections of videos for specific topics or uses. Other websites have similar features.

Understanding

Understanding in the context of digital literacy perhaps most closely resembles traditional literacy because it is the ability to read and interpret text (Jones-Kavalier & Flannigan, 2006). In the digital age, however, the ability to read and understand extends much further than text alone. For example, searches may return results with any combination of text, video, sound, and audio, as well as still and moving pictures. As the internet has evolved, a whole host of visual languages have also evolved, such as moving images, emoticons, icons, data visualizations, videos, and combinations of all the above. Lankshear & Knoble (2008) refer to these modes of communication as “post typographic textual practice.” Understanding the variety of modes of digital material may also be referred to as multimedia literacy (Jones-Kavalier & Flannigan, 2006), visual literacy (Tyner, 1998), or digital literacy (Buckingham, 2006).

Evaluating digital media requires competencies ranging from assessing the importance of a piece of information to determining its accuracy and source. Evaluating information is not new to the digital age, but the nature of digital information can make it more difficult to understand who the source of information is and whether it can be trusted (Jenkins, 2018). When there are abundant and rapidly changing data across heavily populated networks, anyone with access can generate information online. This results in the learner needing to make decisions about its authenticity, trustworthiness, relevance, and significance. Learning evaluative digital skills means learning to ask questions about who is writing the information, why they are writing it, and who the intended audience is (Buckingham, 2006). Developing critical thinking skills is part of the literacy of evaluating and assessing the suitability for use of a specific piece of information (SCONUL, 2016).

Creating in the digital world makes the production of knowledge and ideas in digital formats explicit. While writing is a critical component of traditional literacy, it is not the only creative tool in the digital toolbox. Other tools are available and include creative activities such as podcasting, making audio-visual presentations, building data visualizations, 3D printing, and writing blogs. Tools that haven’t been thought of before are constantly appearing. In short, a digitally literate individual will want to be able to use all formats in which digital information may be conveyed in the creation of a product. A key component of creating with digital tools is understanding what constitutes fair use and what is considered plagiarism. While this is not new to the digital age, it may be more challenging these days to find the line between copying and extending someone else’s work.

In part, the reason for the increased difficulty in discerning between plagiarism and new work is the “cut and paste culture” of the Internet, referred to as “reproduction literacy” (Eshet 2002, p.4), or appropriation in Jenkins’ New Media Literacies (Jenkins, 2018). The question is, what kind and how much change is required to avoid the accusation of plagiarism? This skill requires the ability to think critically, evaluate a work, and make appropriate decisions. There are tools and information to help understand and find those answers, such as the Creative Commons. Learning about such resources and how to use them is part of digital literacy.

Communicating

Communicating is the final category of digital skills in the ALA digital framework. The capacity to connect with individuals all over the world creates unique opportunities for learning and sharing information, for which developing digital communication skills is vital. Some of the skills required for communicating in the digital environment include digital citizenship, collaboration, and cultural awareness. This is not to say that one does not need to develop communication skills outside of the digital environment, but that the skills required for digital communication go beyond what is required in a non-digital environment. Most of us are adept at personal, face- to-face communication, but digital communication needs the ability to engage in asynchronous environments such as email, online forums, blogs, social media, and learning platforms where what is written may not be deleted and may be misinterpreted. Add that to an environment where people number in the millions and the opportunities for misunderstanding and cultural miscues are likely.

The communication category of digital literacies covers an extensive array of skills above and beyond what one might need for face-to-face interactions. It is comprised of competencies around ethical and moral behavior, responsible communication for engagement in social and civic activities (Adam Becker et al., 2017), an awareness of audience, and an ability to evaluate the potential impact of one’s online actions. It also includes skills for handling privacy and security in online environments. These activities fall into two main categories: digital citizenship and collaboration.

Digital citizenship refers to one’s ability to interact effectively in the digital world. Part of this skill is good manners, often referred to as “netiquette.” There is a level of context which is often missing in digital communication due to physical distance, lack of personal familiarity with the people online, and the sheer volume of the people who may encounter our words. People who know us well may understand exactly what we mean when we say something sarcastic or ironic, but people online do not know us, and vocal and facial cues are missing in most digital communication, making it more likely we will be misunderstood. Furthermore, we are more likely to misunderstand or be misunderstood if we are unaware of cultural differences. So, digital citizenship includes an awareness of who we are, what we intend to say, and how it might be perceived by other people we do not know (Buckingham, 2006). It is also a process of learning to communicate clearly in ways that help others understand what we mean.

Another key digital skill is collaboration, and it is essential for effective participation in digital projects via the Internet. The Internet allows people to engage with others they may never see in person and work towards common goals, be they social, civic, or business oriented. Creating a community and working together requires a degree of trust and familiarity that can be difficult to build when there is physical distance between the participants. Greater effort must be made to be inclusive , and to overcome perceived or actual distance and disconnectedness. So, while the potential of digital technology for connecting people is impressive, it is not automatic or effortless, and it requires new skills.

Literacy narratives are stories about reading or composing a message in any form or context. They often include poignant memories that involve a personal experience with literacy. Digital literacy narratives can sometimes be categorized as ones that focus on how the writer came to understand the importance of technology in their life or pedagogy. More often, they are simply narratives that use a medium beyond the print-based essay to tell the story:

Create your own literacy narrative that tells of a significant experience you had with digital literacy. Use a multi-modal tool that includes audio and images or video. Share it with your classmates and discuss the most important ideas you notice in each other’s narratives.

Critical literacy

Literacy scholars recognize that although literacy is a cognitive skill, it is also a set of practices that communities and people participate in. Next, we turn to another perspective on literacy – critical literacy. “Critical” here is not meant as having a negative point of view, but rather using an analytic lens that detects power, privilege, and representation to understand different ways of looking at texts. For example, when groups or individuals stage a protest, do the media refer to them as “protesters” or “rioters?” What is the reason for choosing the label they do, and what are the consequences? 

Critical literacy does not have a set definition or typical history of use, but the following key tenets have been described in the literature, which will vary in their application based on the individual social context (Vasquez, 2019). Table 1 presents some key aspects of critical literacy, but this area of literacy research is growing and evolving rapidly, so this is not an exhaustive list.

An important component of critical literacy is the adoption of culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy. One definition comes from Dr. Django Paris (2012), who stated that Culturally Responsive-Sustaining (CR-S) education recognizes that cultural differences (including racial, ethnic, linguistic, gender, sexuality, and ability ones) should be treated as assets for teaching and learning. Culturally sustaining pedagogy requires teachers to support multilingualism and multiculturalism in their practice. That is, culturally sustaining pedagogy seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain—linguistic, literary, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling.

For more, see the Culturally Responsive and Sustaining F ramework . The framework helps educators to think about how to create student-centered learning environments that uphold racial, linguistic, and cultural identities. It prepares students for rigorous independent learning, develops their abilities to connect across lines of difference, elevates historically marginalized voices, and empowers them as agents of social change. CR-S education explores the relationships between historical and contemporary conditions of inequality and the ideas that shape access, participation, and outcomes for learners.

• What can you do to learn more about your students’ cultures?
• How can you build and sustain relationships with your students?
• How do the instructional materials you use affirm your students’ identities?

Community-based literacies

You may have noticed that communities are a big part of critical literacy – we understand that our environment and culture impact what we read and how we understand the world. Now think about the possible differences among three Iowa communities: a neighborhood in the middle of Des Moines, the rural community of New Hartford, and Coralville, a suburb of Iowa City:

You may not have thought about how living in a certain community might contribute to or take away from a child’s ability to learn to read. Dr. Susan Neuman (2001) did. She and her team investigated the differences between two neighborhoods regarding how much access to books and other reading materials children in those neighborhoods had. One middle-to-upper class neighborhood in Philadelphia had large bookstores, toy stores with educational materials, and well-resourced libraries. The other, a low-income neighborhood, had no bookstores or toy stores. There was a library, but it had fewer resources and served a larger number of patrons. In fact, the team found that even the signs on the businesses were harder to read, and there was less environmental printed word. Their findings showed that each child in the middle-class neighborhood had 13 books on average, while in the lower-class neighborhood there was one book per 300 children .

Dr. Neuman and her team (2019) recently revisited this question. This time, they looked at low-income neighborhoods – those where 60% or more of the people are living in poverty . They compared these to borderline neighborhoods – those with 20-40% in poverty – in three cities, Washington, D.C., Detroit, and Los Angeles. Again, they found significantly fewer books in the very low-income areas. The chart represents the preschool books available for sale in each neighborhood. Note that in the lower-income neighborhood of Washington D.C., there were no books for young children to be found at all!

Now watch this video from Campaign for Grade Level Reading. Access to books is one way that children can have new experiences, but it is not the only way!

What is the “summer slide,” and how does it contribute to the differences in children’s reading abilities?

The importance of being literate and how to get there

“Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope” – Kofi Annan, former United Nations Secretary-General.

Our economy is enhanced when citizens have higher literacy levels. Effective literacy skills open the doors to more educational and employment opportunities so that people can lift themselves out of poverty and chronic underemployment. In our increasingly complex and rapidly changing technological world, it is essential that individuals continuously expand their knowledge and learn new skills to keep up with the pace of change. The goal of our public school system in the United States is to “ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live.” This is the basis of the Common Core Standards, developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center). These groups felt that education was too inconsistent across the different states, and today’s students are preparing to enter a world in which colleges and businesses are demanding more than ever before. To ensure that all students are ready for success after high school, the Common Core State Standards established clear universal guidelines for what every student should know and be able to do in math and English language arts from kindergarten through 12th grade: “The Common Core State Standards do not tell teachers how to teach, but they do help teachers figure out the knowledge and skills their students should have” (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2012).

Explore the Core!

Go to iowacore.gov and click on Literacy Standards. Spend some time looking at the K-3 standards. Notice how consistent they are across the grade levels. Each has specific requirements within the categories:

• Reading Standards for Literature
• Reading Standards for Informational Text
• Reading Standards for Foundational Skills
• Writing Standards
• Speaking and Listening Standards
• Language Standards

Download the Iowa Core K-12 Literacy Manual . You will use it as a reference when you are creating lessons.

Next, explore the Subject Area pages and resources. What tools does the state provide to teachers to support their use of the Core?

Describe a resource you found on the website. How will you use this when you are a teacher?

Watch this video about the Iowa Literacy Core Standards:

• Literacy is typically defined as the ability to ingest, understand, and communicate information.
• Literacy has multiple definitions, each with a different point of focus.
• “New literacies,” or multiliteracies, are a combination of multiple ways of communicating and making meaning, including visual, audio, spatial, behavioral, and gestural communication.
• As online communication has become more prevalent, digital literacy has become more important for learners to engage with the wealth of information available online.
• Critical literacy develops learners’ critical thinking by asking them to use an analytic lens that detects power, privilege, and representation to understand different ways of looking at information.
• The Common Core State Standards were established to set clear, universal guidelines for what every student should know after completing high school.

Resources for teacher educators

• Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework [PDF]
• Common Core State Standards
• Iowa Core Instructional Resources in Literacy

Gonzalez, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2006). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms . New York, NY: Routledge.

Lau, S. M. C. (2012). Reconceptualizing critical literacy teaching in ESL classrooms. The Reading Teacher, 65 , 325–329.

Literacy. (2018, March 19). Retrieved March 2, 2020, from  https://en.unesco.org/themes/literacy

Neuman, S. B., & Celano, D. (2001). Access to print in low‐income and middle‐income communities: An ecological study of four neighborhoods. Reading Research Quarterly, 36 (1), 8-26.

Neuman, S. B., & Moland, N. (2019). Book deserts: The consequences of income segregation on children’s access to print.  Urban education, 54 (1), 126-147.

New London Group (1996). A Pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures.  Harvard Educational Review, 66 (1), 60-92.

O’Brien, J. (2001). Children reading critically: A local history. In B. Comber & A. Simpson (Eds.), Negotiating critical literacies in classrooms (pp. 41–60). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Ordoñez-Jasis, R., & Ortiz, R. W. (2006). Reading their worlds: Working with diverse families to enhance children’s early literacy development. Y C Young Children, 61 (1), 42.

Saha S. (2006). Improving literacy as a means to reducing health disparities. J Gen Intern Med. 21 (8):893-895. doi:10.1111/j.1525-1497.2006.00546.x

UNESCO. (2017). Literacy rates continue to rise from one generation to the next global literacy trends today. Retrieved from http://on.unesco.org/literacy-map.

Vasquez, V.M., Janks, H. & Comber, B. (2019). Critical Literacy as a Way of Being and Doing. Language Arts, 96 (5), 300-311.

Vlieghe, J. (2015). Traditional and digital literacy. The literacy hypothesis, technologies of reading and writing, and the ‘grammatized’ body. Ethics and Education, 10 (2), 209-226.

Zimmerman, E. B., Woolf, S. H., Blackburn, S. M., Kimmel, A. D., Barnes, A. J., & Bono, R. S. (2018). The case for considering education and health. Urban Education, 53 (6), 744-773.U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences.

U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2022 Reading Assessment.

Methods of Teaching Early Literacy Copyright © 2023 by Constance Beecher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

What you need to know about literacy

What is the global situation in relation to literacy.

Great progress has been made in literacy with most recent data (UNESCO Institute for Statistics) showing that more than 86 per cent of the world’s population know how to read and write compared to 68 per cent in 1979. Despite this, worldwide at least 763 million adults still cannot read and write, two thirds of them women, and 250 million children are failing to acquire basic literacy skills. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the worst disruption to education in a century, 617 million children and teenagers had not reached minimum reading levels.   

How does UNESCO define literacy?

Acquiring literacy is not a one-off act. Beyond its conventional concept as a set of reading, writing and counting skills, literacy is now understood as a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich and fast-changing world. Literacy is a continuum of learning and proficiency in reading, writing and using numbers throughout life and is part of a larger set of skills, which include digital skills, media literacy, education for sustainable development and global citizenship as well as job-specific skills. Literacy skills themselves are expanding and evolving as people engage more and more with information and learning through digital technology.  

What are the effects of literacy?

Literacy empowers and liberates people. Beyond its importance as part of the right to education, literacy improves lives by expanding capabilities which in turn reduces poverty, increases participation in the labour market and has positive effects on health and sustainable development. Women empowered by literacy have a positive ripple effect on all aspects of development. They have greater life choices for themselves and an immediate impact on the health and education of their families, and in particular, the education of girl children.  

How does UNESCO work to promote literacy?

UNESCO works through its global network, field offices and institutes and with its Member States and partners to advance literacy in the framework of lifelong learning, and address the literacy target 4.6 in SDG4 and the Education 2030 Framework for Action . Its Strategy for Youth and Adult Literacy (2020-2025) pays special attention to the member countries of the Global Alliance for Literacy which targets 20 countries with an adult literacy rate below 50 per cent and the E9 countries, of which 17 are in Africa. The focus is on promoting literacy in formal and non-formal settings with four priority areas: strengthening national strategies and policy development on literacy; addressing the needs of disadvantaged groups, particularly women and girls; using digital technologies to expand and improve learning outcomes; and monitoring progress and assessing literacy skills. UNESCO also promotes adult learning and education through its Institute for Lifelong Learning , including the implementation of the 2015 Recommendation on Adult Learning and Education and its monitoring through the Global Report on Adult Learning and Education. 

What is digital literacy and why is it important?

UNESCO defines digital literacy as the ability to access, manage, understand, integrate, communicate, evaluate and create information safely and appropriately through digital technologies for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship. It includes skills such as computer literacy, ICT literacy, information literacy and media literacy which aim to empower people, and in particular youth, to adopt a critical mindset when engaging with information and digital technologies, and to build their resilience in the face of disinformation, hate speech and violent extremism.

How is UNESCO helping advance girls' and women's literacy?

UNESCO’s Global Partnership for Women and Girls Education, launched in 2011, emphasizes quality education for girls and women at the secondary level and in the area of literacy; its Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) project (2005–15) targeted women; and UNESCO’s international literacy prizes regularly highlight the life-changing power of meeting women’s and girls’ needs for literacy in specific contexts. Literacy acquisition often brings with it positive change in relation to harmful traditional practices, forms of marginalization and deprivation. Girls’ and women’s literacy seen as lifelong learning is integral to achieving the aims of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.  

How has youth and adult literacy been impacted in times of COVID-19?

Since the start of the pandemic, several surveys have been conducted but very little is still known about the effect on youth and adult literacy of massive disruptions to learning, growing inequalities and projected increases in school dropouts. To fill this gap UNESCO will conduct a global survey “Learning from the COVID-19 crisis to write the future: National policies and programmes for youth and adult literacy” collecting information from countries worldwide regarding the situation and policy and programme responses. Its results will help UNESCO, countries and other partners respond better to the recovery phase and advance progress towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 on education and its target 4.6 on youth and adult literacy. In addition, for International Literacy Day 2020, UNESCO prepared a background paper on the impact of the crisis on youth and adult literacy.

What is the purpose of the Literacy Prize and Literacy Day?

Every year since 1967, UNESCO celebrates International Literacy Day and rewards outstanding and innovative programmes that promote literacy through the International Literacy Prizes. Every year on 8 September UNESCO comes together for the annual celebration with Field Offices, institutes, NGOs, teachers, learners and partners to remind the world of the importance of literacy as a matter of dignity and human rights. The event emphasizes the power of literacy and creates awareness to advance the global agenda towards a more literate and sustainable society. 

The International Literacy Prizes reward excellence and innovation in the field of literacy and, so far, over 506 projects and programmes undertaken by governments, non-governmental organizations and individuals around the world have been recognized. Following an annual call for submissions, an International Jury of experts appointed by UNESCO's Director-General recommends potential prizewinning programmes. Candidates are submitted by Member States or by international non-governmental organizations in official partnership with UNESCO.

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Literacy Narrative Explained

Literacy Narrative Examples for College Students

A literacy narrative is quite simply that: it is a story of how you became literate and how it has affected your life. To create a literacy narrative, you just need to find your story and use  descriptive text  to bring it to life. Learn how to write a literacy narrative through exploring original and famous examples.

Breaking Down a Literacy Narrative

A literacy narrative is a personalized story of your relationship with language. Not only do literacy narratives discuss memories, but they also walk through a person’s discovery, trials and triumphs with reading, writing and speaking a language.

This doesn’t have to be English either. It could be your experiences  learning a second language  and the impact that it has had on you. The point is simply to tell the world about your struggles and growth with language and communication. Literacy narratives can have different  themes , topics, styles,  moods  and  tones  that you can work to make your own.

Key Features of a Literacy Narrative

To start, a literacy narrative is a personalized story.

• Hook:  Begin with a hook  to draw the reader in. This could be your first experience with books or how reading and writing define you.
• Focus: Rounding out your first paragraph, you’ll want to give a short thesis that tells the reader the whole point of your story.
• Meaning: Throughout the remainder of your narrative, you’ll use stories and  vivid descriptions  to explore the meaning of this journey to you. You might discuss how your poetry has grown or your love of reading has turned into writing.
• Challenges: Explore the challenges that you’ve faced in your journey and how you’ve overcome them, along with how your ideas and thoughts have transformed.

Example: Relationship with Words

Explore how to write a literacy  narrative essay  through an original example for college level students. The following example is written by  Jennifer Betts .

Words were like a puzzle that I couldn’t quite solve. Listening to the teachers read the jumbled-up letters on the page, I was fascinated by how they could easily bring the pictures to life. The first day that I truly became literate, it was like another world opening up. My fingers couldn’t find books fast enough. My relationship with words has been a powerful, fantastical and even sometimes disastrous journey.

I would like to say that I’ve always known the power of words, but that simply isn’t true. The power that a word can hold jumped at me like a thief in the night the first time I encountered my own personal bully. They took the words that I’d proudly written and made them less meaningful than trash. However, it was that bully that forced my reading and vocabulary to grow. They made me realize the power that a few sentences could hold in an instant. Like swords in battle, they can quickly cut and decimate your opponent. Mastering the tactics of battle, you turn from the opponent to the victor. The need to be the victor drove me to books. And books opened my eyes to a whole new way of thinking.

I have that bully to thank for leading me to the  children’s book  Harry Potter. The moment I slid open those silken pages, my eyes couldn’t devour them fast enough. The story pushed the limits of my vast imagination and truly allowed me to soar. The moment the journey was over, I missed it. And there hasn’t been another book since that has truly satisfied that high.

While I had dabbled in writing my own love stories a time or two, my need to find another fantasy that consumed me like the Harry Potter series pushed me into trying my own hand at writing. The moment my fingers hit the keys, the words just started pouring out of me at a rate that even I couldn’t control. Who knew that the shy, introverted child had so much to say?

While my relationship with written words are the things of dreams, my plunge into speaking often has disastrous consequences. Never have I been a good public speaker. In school, it was the day that I dreaded. Despite my preparation, I would trip and stumble to the podium only to repeat my performance in my carefully planned words. While they say practice makes perfect, in my case, practice has made mediocre. But to get the world to hear your words, sometimes you need to find the courage to speak them.

Even if the delivery isn’t perfect.

Though my journey with words started in frustration, it turned to fascination and wonder in a minute. Even with many years of reading under my belt, I’m still humbled by the power that a single word can hold if used the right or even the wrong way. Sharper than knives or softer than a silk, finding the right words is always an interesting journey.

Famous Examples of a Literacy Narrative

Literacy narratives can make an impact. Going beyond a short essay, a literacy narrative can even become an entire book that explores your literacy journey. To get your creative juices flowing, look at a few excerpts from famous examples of literacy narratives.

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking.

In “ The Writing Life ,” Annie Dilliard uses short essays to explore her journey with literacy and writing. Using her own unique style, Annie helps you to explore how and why she is a writer and what a rough and exciting journey it can be. You follow how writing can be torturous and transcendent all in the same moment.

Literacy Narrative by Kiki Petrosino

I wish to put my blackness into some kind of order. My blackness, my builtness, my blackness, a bill. I want you to know how I feel it: cold key under the tongue. Mean fishhook of homesickness that catches my heart when I walk under southern pines. And how I recognized the watery warp of the floor in my great-grandma’s house, when I dreamed it. This is what her complaining ghost said: Write about me.

Culture and writing and how culture affects writing are explored in “ Literacy Narrative ,” a personal essay by Kiki Petrosino. Kiki uses her experiences as a black woman and her history to show her relationship with words. She explores how her African American heritage drives her writing and how, through her journey with  descriptive poetry , she intermingles her poetry and race to create a compelling work.

Bird by Bird Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.

Anne Lamott takes you through a hilarious and witty ride to finding her story in “ Bird by Bird .” Through showing you her journey into becoming a writer and finding literacy, she tries to help others find their own story in this  personal narrative . Starting with some words of wisdom from her father, this literacy narrative takes you through her entire journey with writer’s block and pushing your limits. This is a great example of the impact and depth that a literacy narrative can take.

Finding Your Words

Everyone has a literacy story. It can even be how you don’t like to read. In college, you often have to explore your personal literacy story through an essay. Using these tactics and examples, you can dive into the fun world of  personal expression  and exploration. If literacy narratives aren’t your jam, you might give poetry a try. There are several  poetry genres  perfect for personal exploration and introspection, too.

https://examples.yourdictionary.com/literacy-narrative-examples-for-college-students.html

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Defining and Understanding Literacy

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Simply put, literacy is the ability to read and write in at least one language. So just about everyone in developed countries is literate in the basic sense. In her book "The Literacy Wars," Ilana Snyder argues that "there is no single, correct view of literacy that would be universally accepted. There are a number of competing definitions, and these definitions are continually changing and evolving." The following quotes raise several issues about literacy, its necessity, its power, and its evolution.

Observations on Literacy

• "Literacy is a human right, a tool of personal empowerment and a means for social and human development. Educational opportunities depend on literacy. Literacy is at the heart of basic education for all and essential for eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, curbing population growth, achieving gender equality and ensuring sustainable development, peace, and democracy.", "Why Is Literacy Important?" UNESCO , 2010
• "The notion of basic literacy is used for the initial learning of reading and writing, which adults who have never been to school need to go through. The term functional literacy is kept for the level of reading and writing that adults are thought to need in a modern complex society. Use of the term underlines the idea that although people may have basic levels of literacy, they need a different level to operate in their day-to-day lives.", David Barton, "Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language ," 2006
• "To acquire literacy is more than to psychologically and mechanically dominate reading and writing techniques. It is to dominate those techniques in terms of consciousness; to understand what one reads and to write what one understands: It is to communicate graphically. Acquiring literacy does not involve memorizing sentences, words or syllables, lifeless objects unconnected to an existential universe, but rather an attitude of creation and re-creation, a self-transformation producing a stance of intervention in one's context.", Paulo Freire, "Education for Critical Consciousness," 1974
• "There is hardly an oral culture or a predominantly oral culture left in the world today that is not somehow aware of the vast complex of powers forever inaccessible without literacy.", Walter J. Ong, "Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word," 1982

Women and Literacy

Joan Acocella, in a New Yorker review of the book "The Woman Reader" by Belinda Jack, had this to say in 2012:

"In the history of women, there is probably no matter, apart from contraception, more important than literacy. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, access to the power required knowledge of the world. This could not be gained without reading and writing, skills that were granted to men long before they were to women. Deprived of them, women were condemned to stay home with the livestock or, if they were lucky, with the servants. (Alternatively, they may have been the servants.) Compared with men, they led mediocre lives. In thinking about wisdom, it helps to read about wisdom, about Solomon or Socrates or whomever. Likewise, goodness and happiness and love. To decide whether you have them or want to make the sacrifices necessary to get them, it is useful to read about them. Without such introspection, women seemed stupid; therefore, they were considered unfit for education; therefore, they weren’t given an education; therefore they seemed stupid." 

A New Definition?

Barry Sanders, in "A Is for Ox: Violence, Electronic Media, and the Silencing of the Written Word" (1994), makes a case for a changing definition of literacy in the technological age.

"We need a radical redefinition of literacy, one that includes a recognition of the vital importance that morality plays in shaping literacy . We need a radical redefinition of what it means for society to have all the appearances of literacy and yet to abandon the book as its dominant metaphor. We must understand what happens when the computer replaces the book as the prime metaphor for visualizing the self." "It is important to remember that those who celebrate the intensities and discontinuities of postmodern electronic culture in print write from an advanced literacy. That literacy provides them the profound power of choosing their ideational repertoire. No such choice or power is available to the illiterate young person subjected to an endless stream of electronic images." 

• Orality: Definition and Examples
• What Is a Literacy Test?
• The Power of Literacy Narratives
• 5 Ways to Improve Adult Literacy
• Definition and Meaning of Illiteracy
• Multiple Literacies: Definition, Types, and Classroom Strategies
• Adult Education
• How to Assess and Teach Reading Comprehension
• How to Understand a Difficult Reading Passage
• Thinking About Reading
• Teaching Developmental Reading Skills for Targeted Content Focuses
• 'Fahrenheit 451' Overview
• 7 Independent Reading Activities to Increase Literacy
• Literature Definitions: What Makes a Book a Classic?
• 7 Reading Strategies and Activities for Elementary Students
• Definition, Examples, and Observations on Writing

Table of Contents

Ai, ethics & human agency, collaboration, information literacy, writing process, literacy – new tools, new thoughts: the progress of expression.

• © 2023 by Joseph M. Moxley - University of South Florida

Historically, literacy refers to the act of reading and writing--the act of symbolic thinking. Yet, over time, as humanity has developed new tools for expression (e.g., the printing press, the internet, social media, or artificial intelligence), humanity has developed a more nuanced understanding of what it means to read and write. This article defines literacy, summarizes different types of literacies, and explores the effects of literacy on human consciousness and culture.

Literacy Definition

Literacy refers to, or functions as,

• the ability to  read  and  write  in home, school, workplace, and public settings
• an amalgam of competencies, skills, knowledge, and dispositions related to acts of interpretation , communication , or competency
• a commodity
• empowers people to develop their personal, social, and economic power
• empowers literate cultures to develop new ideas and methods, including science, social science, humanities, engineering, and arts
• a measure of educational attainment and audience awareness .

Related Concepts

Academic Writing Prose Style ; Critical Literacy ; Information Literacy ; Intellectual Openness ; Professional Writing Prose Style ; Rhetoric & Apparatus Theory ; Semiotics: Sign, Signifier, Signified ; Writing Process

What is Literacy? – Guide to Literacy

Definitions of literacy are constantly changing as cultures and technologies evolve–and as our understanding of reading and writing becomes more nuanced. Throughout much of human history, literacy referred simply to a person’s ability to read and write alphabetical texts . Around 3400 BC in Sumer (in modern day Iraq) you were literate if you could write in Sumerian on a clay tablet to record agricultural matters and business contracts. In the Middle Ages you were considered literate if you could sign your name with an X to symbolize “In Christ’s name, it’s true/I assert.” Later on, you were considered literate if you could read a bus schedule or a daily newspaper.

In more recent times, literacy has come to refer to

• any act of symbolic thinking (e.g., visual language , nonverbal language, or musical language) to communicate
• any competency. For instance, someone with sports knowledge could be said to have sports literacy. Or someone with knowledge of medical discourse might be described as scientifically literate.

In some  discourse communities  in 2023, you wouldn’t be considered  literate  if you couldn’t write computer code, create  data visualizations , publish a podcast, or design an iPhone app. In  workplace writing , as  communication  has become more  visual  and interactive, basic literacy may be defined as  knowledge  of the  principles of design  or  universal design  or even  page design and scannability . In settings such as college-level courses, basic literacy may refer to the ability to manipulate photos, subscribe to and publish podcasts, data walk content across digital platforms, and publish content online via various digital tools, such as WordPress, Wiki, Instagram, or Tik Tok.

Thanks to advances in human knowledge , new writing spaces (e.g., clay or stone tablets, papyrus, paper, email, text messages, social media) are constantly evolving–and challenging existing assumptions about the best ways to read and write. These writing spaces along with new writing tools (e.g., fingers, quills, pencils, pens, keyboards, stylus, mouse, ChatGPT) have affordances and constraints that profoundly influence whether they replace existing technologies or whether they create new means of creative expression. When writing spaces and writing tools — the apparatus of writing — make a composing process easier, those tools are likely to be widely adopted. Note, for instance, how the internet’s affordance of permitting a single individual to communicate to a massive global audience has transformed authorship, copyright , politics, economics, culture, and intellectual property standards .

New writing spaces and writing tool s are constantly redefining

• their research methodologies along with the epistemological assumptions about what constitutes a valid knowledge claim
• the medium of expression (e.g., alphabetical language; visual language ; nonverbal language)
• their composing process (aka creative process) .

1. Literacy Refers to the Ability To Read and Write

Traditionally, the term literacy refers to humanity’s unique capability to read and write –and to engage in acts of symbolic thought. Between 16 and 24 months children are capable of associating words and symbols with concrete objects . For instance, when reading a children’s book, children may point to a familiar object such as a picture of a dog and say “dog” (“Symbolic Thought” 2012).

As humanity has developed new tools for expression (e.g., the print press, the internet, social media, AI – Artificial Intelligence), we have also developed more nuanced ways of defining literacy–new ways of conceptualizing reading and writing

Semiotics , an interdisciplinary academic field that investigates how people convey meaning to one another, conceptualizes reading to be an act of signification . In this model, meaning is composed of (1)  a signifier –i.e., a word or symbol or something that conveys meaning to others — and (2) a signified –i.e., the underlying meaning associated with a sign . In other words, meaning is — a sign -which is any word , symbol , visualization or thing that can be interpreted to mean something.

In this definition of literacy, meaning-making is a social process: To communicate , writers and readers use signs that are socially shared among members of a discourse community . For communication to be successful, thus, the reader and the writer must share an understanding of what the Semiotics: Sign, Signifier, Signified means. In other words, writers and readers constitute a discourse community , a shared interpretative network . People are inculcated into the discourse practices of a community by reading, by communicating wit h others in the discourse community and through schooling–enculturation: Informally, they read the works of other community members, the archive , and learn over time who quotes whom–what the canon is.

During school, students are introduced to the expectations of discourse communities , particularly as they learn about the discourse practices of the academic and workplace writers . For instance, in the U.S. students learn the conventions of Standard Written English , including formal instruction in grammar , mechanics , and style –especially The Elements of Style . In higher education coursework, students enrolled in first-year writing courses across colleges and universities are trained to adopt an academic writing prose style . They are introduced to academic genres (e.g., an annotated bibliography or an argument ), information literacy perspectives & practices , and citation practices . From reading, talks with others in a discourse community , and from their own experiences receiving critiques from others, they learn to share expectations about common patterns for genre , diction , grammar , mechanics , sentence structure , media –and more. In turn, students enrolled in workplace writing courses are introduced to the shared expectations of a professional writing prose style for business contexts. Broadly speaking, all of these discourse conventions constitute signs than can be interpreted by members of a discourse community .

2. Literacy Refers to a Synthesis of Cognitive, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal Competencies

Literacy, as defined by the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) community is an amalgam of many competencies, skills, knowledge, and dispositions. In  Education for Life  and Work  (2012), The National Research Council theorizes that all of the competencies involved in acts of communication coalesce under three foundational knowledge domains:

• Cognitive Competencies
• Intrapersonal Competencies
• Interpersonal Competencies

Notice in their depiction of these knowledge domains below that the National Research Council places communication , reasoning, and problem solving at the center of their conceptual illustration. In other words, the STEM community defines literacy as literacy a complex, symbolic process that is dependent on numerous interdependent competencies.

3. Literacy Refers to a Commodity

Literacy functions as a commodity : the ability to read and write , to engage in symbolic thinking, may be exchanged for money, goods, services, opportunities, and jobs. Mastery of specialized literacies — such as digital literacy, visual literacy , design literacy , financial literacy, health literacy — can be particularly profitable.

Moreover, ideas, concepts, inventions, original stories are all forms of intellectual property that are protected by copyright . Information has value .

Each year, NACE (The National Association of Colleges and Employers) surveys employers regarding their hiring plans and desires. Year after year, communication and critical thinking are the most highly sought after competencies. In 2022, for instance, 98.5% of the employers surveyed believed communication competencies were needed for career readiness, yet employers believed only 54.3% of college graduates were suitably prepared to communicate well in the workplace.

4. Literacy Refers to a Technology, a Toolset

In writing studies (and the broader education community) literacy is perceived to

• empower people to develop their personal, social, and economic power
• empower literate cultures to develop new ideas and research methods, including science, social science, humanities, engineering, and arts–and more.

Literacy Empowers People to Develop their Personal, Social, and Economic Power

Personal power.

Literacy provides agency. Strong communication skills will enable you to fight for changes you deem important and help you develop your goals and personal mission. Writing (and communication in general) enables you to articulate the need for change and action. Informing, persuading, and entertaining other people about your thoughts and insights enables you to provoke changes you deem important.

Literacy facilitates your personal development in meaningful ways. Engaging in writing about your goals can help you determine 

• develop your cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies
• develop awareness of others–different cultures, historical periods–and more
• affirm a growth mindset , take authority and ownership of your life
• think independently and be an agent for change
• make the world a better place.

When you write something down on a page, you are no longer as slave to memory. Literacy empowers reflection, self regulation , and metacognition . By transforming your thoughts into text , you create an opportunity to return to that thought and reflect on it. This affordance of writing to help you record a thought for later reflection frees you from the tyranny of a moment-by-moment existence.

Writing from our hearts, sharing our experiences, can be important to our personal happiness. You can keep a journal to reflect on your writing processes , obstacles, and ambitions. When you read the work of other people who have different values, experiences, religions, and world views, your own knowledge and perspective may evolve. While conducting research for writing, you are likely to come across ideas, places, and concepts that you otherwise might not consider. While collaborating on documents, you may obtain insights from your co-authors regarding your strengths and weakness as a researcher, writer, and collaborator.

Social Power – Cultural Power

From a personal-social perspective, writing enables individuals to forge connections with family and friends as well as people we may not otherwise meet in face-to-face situations. Via handwritten notes to posts on social media, writing affords the possibility of connecting with friends and sharing insights and aspirations. Our writing can create rich social networks that give us a sense of meaning and connectedness.

From a nation-state perspective, literacy is an important measure of a country’s competitiveness, and a signal of the health of its people and the quality of its educational systems. Not surprisingly, nations are eager to measure literacy within their borders and across nation states.

• PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is a worldwide assessment of the mathematical, science, and reading competencies of 15 year olds conducted by the  Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development  (OECD). In 2018, the last time PISA was conducted, the United States ranked 13th out of 79 countries and regions. The top 10 countries were China (B-S-J-Z), Singapore, Macao (China), Estonia, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Korea, Sweden, and New Zealand).

According to a subsequent NAEP report card, the decline in U.S. students’ literacy skills in 2019 accelerated in 2022: Remarkably, only thirty-three percent of fourth grade students scored at or above the NAEP proficiency level. Across the board literacy rates fell at the 4th and 8th level (12 grade assessments have yet to be reported): “the average reading score at both fourth and eighth grade decreased by 3 points compared to 2019. At fourth grade, the average reading score was lower than all previous assessment years going back to 2005 and was not significantly different in comparison to 1992.” This is especially problematic because children who cannot read in the 4th grade are 15 times more likely to drop out of school (NAEP Report Card: Reading 2019). At the adult level, there is further evidence of declining literacy competencies in the U.S.: “ According to a 2021 Pew Research survey , roughly a quarter of American adults—including 38 percent of Hispanic adults, 25 percent of Black adults and 20 percent of white adults—say they haven’t read a book in whole or in part in the past year, whether in print or in electronic or audio form. This is even true of 11 percent of adults with a bachelor’s or other advanced degree. These  figures  are nearly triple those reported in 1978″ (Mintz 2022).

From a social perspective, declines in literacy weaken the social fabric of a culture, creating fragmentation and discord. Without a shared archive , canon , people lack shared religious, political, and historical allusions.

Economic Power

Literacy is strongly correlated with economic power: “In an information  economy ,  reading  and writing serve as input, output, and conduit for producing profit and winning  economic  advantage (Deborah Brandt, D. 2001).

Literacy empower literate cultures to develop new ideas and methods–and more.

In writing studies and media studies, literacy is perceived to be a technology that transforms consciousness and cultures. For instance, in Orality and literacy : the technologizing of the word , Walter Ong theorizes that literacy empowers cultures to break away from the discourse patterns of orality. Ong argues literacy creates the possibility of sustained inquiry and science; it offers a method for interpreting texts ( hermeneutics ), creates the need for schooling, and places the spotlight on knowledge as opposed to pathos , which underscores oral discourse. He argues oral cultures tend to repeat the same things over and over again–that the focus is on memory and repetition as opposed to making new knowledge or testing knowledge claims :

Following Ong’s analysis of ways literacy transforms human consciousness and following the emergence of the internet and new media, Gregory Ulmer has theorized that we have entered an Age of Electracy. For Ulmer, electracy functions as a form of entertainment that is experienced subjectively. (See Rhetoric & Apparatus Theory for more on this.)

5. Literacy Refers to a Measure of Educational Attainment and Audience Awareness.

Ultimately, as you have no doubt surmised from the above discussion, literacy functions as a signal of how educated someone is with regards to a discourse community’s conventions and expectations . If you cannot adjust the register of your communications and use the diction, syntax, genres, and media your audiences expects, then you’ll be judged as uneducated or unprofessional.

Types of Literacy

Because the term literacy has been broadened to reference competency in any topic , there are literally hundreds of different types of literacies. Below are a few of the main ones, the ones that matter in academic and workplace contexts .

Functional Literacy

At the international level, as discussed above, world governments focus on functional definitions of literacy–i.e., how well citizens can understand words and sentences and how well they can interpret, make inferences from, and act on what they read across multiple texts. For instance, can citizens understand a newspaper? Can they understand an airplane or bus schedule? Can they read the job announcement and submit a job application?

Critical Literacy

In educational contexts, critical literacy , rather than functional literacy , is the goal. Critical literacy is concerned with rhetorical analysis of power relationships. Critical literacy engages students in metacognition and self reflection about the currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose of knowledge claims .

Digital Literacy

Digital literacy concerns how individuals navigate and employ digital tools to consume and produce information.

New communication technologies (e.g., the pen, pencil, printing press, internet) alter how people think and conduct themselves–how they collaborate, design , edit , invent , organize , research , and revise documents. As communication technologies evolve, digital literacies create new genres and new media .

Information Literacy   refers to the  competencies  associated with  locating ,  evaluating ,  using , and archiving   information . In order to thrive, much less survive in  a global information economy  — an economy where  information  functions as a capital good such as money or social influence — you need to be strategic about how you  consume  and use  information .

• ACRL Information Literacy Perspectives & Practices
• Authority (in Speech and Writing)
• Empathetic Information Literacy
• Information Architecture
• Information Design
• Information, Data
• Interpretation, Interpretative Frameworks
• The CRAAP Test

Quantitative Literacy

Quantitative Literacy refers to the ability to understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute numerical information.

Visual Literacy

“Visual literacy is a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media. Visual literacy skills equip a learner to understand and analyze the contextual, cultural, ethical, aesthetic, intellectual, and technical components involved in the production and use of visual materials. A visually literate individual is both a critical consumer of visual media and a competent contributor to a body of shared knowledge and culture. .In an interdisciplinary, higher education environment, a visually literate individual is able to Determine the nature and extent of the visual materials needed Find and access needed images and visual media effectively and efficiently Interpret and analyze the meaning of images and visual media Critically evaluate images and their sources Use images and visual media effectively Design and create meaningful images and visual media Understand many of the ethical, legal, social, and economic issues surrounding the creation and use of images and visual media, and access and use visual materials ethically.” ACRL (Association of College & Research Libraries

• ( ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education ).

What is Literacy?

Literacy — What it means to be literate or to engage in literacy practices — is never a question that can be answered definitively. Why? Because what it means to be literate is constantly changing, evolving. Years ago, if you could correctly interpret a bus map and get to work, you’d be considered literate . In today’s world, you’re not literate — by some community standards — — if you cannot read and write computer code.

Why Does Literacy Matter?

Literacy–broadly conceived of as reading and writing–is empowering, both professionally and personally. Engaging in literacy practices further develops your cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies . Literacy provides a culture, a community , with the capacity to design an archive ; to engage in dialog, textual hermeneutics , and research ; and to track citations and contributions to human knowledge .

Recommended Resources

Ong. (1988). Orality and literacy : the technologizing of the word. Routledge.

“ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education”, American Library Association, October 27, 2011. http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/visualliteracy (Accessed February 11, 2023). Document ID: 4d02961f-23ff-b874-7d6d-9f8d0b87e7c2

Brandt, D. (Ed.). (2001). Literacy, Opportunity, and Economic Change. In Literacy in American Lives (pp. 25–46). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511810237.002

National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) . (n.d.). Retrieved February 8, 2023, from https://nces.ed.gov/naal/fr_definition.asp#:~:text=Literacy%20is%20the%20ability%20to,develop%20one’s%20knowledge%20and%20potential.

National Research Council. (2012).  Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century . J.W. Pellegrino and M.L. Hilton (Eds.), Committee on Defining Deeper Learning and 21st Century Skills, Center for Education, Board on Testing and Assessment, Division of Behavioral Sciences

NAEP Reading: Reading Highlights 2022 . (2022, November). NAEP Report Card: 2022 NAEP Reading Assessment. https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/reading/2022/

UNESCO. (2006)  Education for All: A Global Monitoring Report . Chapter 6: “Understandings of Literacy.” p. 147-159,   http://www.unesco.org/education/GMR2006/full/chapt6_eng.pdf

White, S., and McCloskey, M. (2003).  Framework for the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy  (NCES 2005-531). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.  https://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/fr_skills.asp

Related Articles:

21st century literacies & writing studies, cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies.

Communication

Semiotics: Sign, Signifier, Signified

Symbolic communication, symbolic systems, visual language.

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Communication refers to the sender’s use of signs and semiotic systems (e.g., body language, alphabetical or visual language) to convey meaning and (2) the reader’s, listener’s, user’s . . ....

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Defining Literacy Concept Essay

Depending on context, literacy can be defined in different ways. First, it is the ability to know, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute using information written in any form and under varying contexts. It can also be defined as the ability to write coherently, think critically, and read not only for knowledge, but also to acquaint oneself with the environmental context (Gordon & Gordon, 2003).

Literacy can also be defined as the ability to make and communicate meaning by use of a variety of socially identifiable contextual symbols. In various levels of developmental ability, a literate person can gain and convey meaning and use their knowledge and judgment to achieve a desired objective or goal that requires the use of language skills either in writing or in writing.

A literate person can arbitrate their world by obtaining meaning from one knowledge base and apply or connect it to another knowledge base intentionally and flexibly (Brace, Brockhoff, Sparkes, and Tuckey, 2006a). For instance, knowing that letters represent sounds and that those sounds form words to which the audience can attach meaning entails literacy under this context. The definition of literacy is dynamic, evolving, and reflects the continual changes in our society (Kress, 2003).

Literacy can be achieved by establishing a reading culture which involves the development of skills and this process begins with ability to comprehend both spoken and written words. To be fluent in reading and comprehension, one has to be familiar with speech sounds, spelling patterns, word meaning, grammar and patterns of word formation (Elaine and Edward, 2003).

Once these skills are acquired, the reader will have attained full language literacy which includes the capability to interpret printed material from an informed perspective and undertake a detailed analysis and to write with accuracy and soundness. Literacy involves continuity in learning and enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society.

Literacy can also be defined as set of practical tools to facilitate work on the job, at home, and around the community (Gunther, 2003). There are different types of literacy and they give us a wide definition of literacy. To start with is prose literature which measures how well one understands and uses information found in various written materials. Second is document literacy which assesses how well one finds and uses information in a number of pictorial representations.

The third is quantitative literacy which assesses how well one can use numbers found in printed and othenr visual media. Quantitative literacy is a little different from prose and document literacy because apart from using text to find a meaning, one must add, subtract, multiply, divide or perform any other mathematical computation to obtain the required information.

The final type of literacy is health literacy that evaluates how well one can comprehend and use health-related information to make health-related decisions. These include actions that involve health promotion and protection disease prevention, and all other aspects that relate to the healthcare system.

The ability to read and write is fundamental to a successful education, career, independent living, and quality of life in today’s world (Street, 1984). With the evolving world, one has to be literate for almost every aspect of today’s environment requires some form of literacy.

Brace, J., Brockhoff, V., Sparkes, N., and Tuckey, J. (2006a). First Steps: Speaking and listening map of development (2nd ed.). Port Melbourne, Vic: Rigby

Gordon, E. H., and Gordon, E. E. (2003). Literacy in America: historic journey and contemporary solutions . New York: Praeger

Kress, G. R. (2003). Literacy in the new media age . New York: Routledge

Street, B. V. (1984). Literacy in theory and practice . Cambridge University Press Cambridge.

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IvyPanda. (2022, April 13). Defining Literacy Concept. https://ivypanda.com/essays/definition-of-literacy-essay/

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IvyPanda . 2022. "Defining Literacy Concept." April 13, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/definition-of-literacy-essay/.

1. IvyPanda . "Defining Literacy Concept." April 13, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/definition-of-literacy-essay/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Defining Literacy Concept." April 13, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/definition-of-literacy-essay/.

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Literacy is More than Just Reading and Writing

NCTE 03.23.20 Diversity

From the NCTE Standing Committee on Global Citizenship

This post was written by NCTE member Amber Peterson, a member of the NCTE Standing Committee on Global Citizenship.

“History is written by the victors.” —Unknown

As committee members, we regularly wrestle with pinning down a comprehensive definition of literacy. The common definition, “the ability to read and write,” gets increasingly complex upon closer examination. What does mastery of reading and writing look like? How do we measure it? How do we weigh digital and technological proficiency? Where does numeracy come in? How do the values of our communities and cultural practices come into play? sWhen measuring literacy, which languages and dialects count and which do not?

Despite the complexity, literacy is the global metric we use to assess the health and competence of communities. High literacy rates have been found to correlate to everything from better access to economic opportunity, to better nutrition, to environmental sustainability.

In fact, bolstering global literacy underpins all of UNESCO’s 2030 Sustainability Goals, acknowledging the fact that ideals like gender equality, sustainable infrastructure, and eradicating poverty and hunger are not possible without literate populations. Correspondingly, UNESCO’s hefty definition of literacy is “a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich and fast-changing world.” (UNESCO)

This focus on literacy as a tool for meaningful engagement with society makes sense. As our population expands and technology breaks down ever more barriers between us, the ability to communicate and interact with those around us becomes even more important. In our consideration of literacy, however, it is impossible to ignore the myriad ways that imperialist and colonialist systems shape gender and regional disparities in access.

Many historians propose that written language emerged at least in part as a tool for maintaining power. One’s class status dictated one’s access to literacy education, and often those without power were prohibited from learning to read and write at all. Colonialism, imperialism, and the sprawl of anglo-european, male-centered ideology from the 15th Century onward have created global power structures that still dominate today.

When considered from that perspective, it is no surprise that women make up two thirds of the world’s illiterate population, and that sub-Saharan Africa, the region arguably hit hardest by many of those inequitable power structures, has some of the lowest literacy levels in the world.

While our focus must and should be on providing everyone everywhere with the tools to “identify, understand, interpret, create, and communicate in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich, and fast changing world,” those persistent inequitable power structures dictate that progress will always be lopsided and slow.

As we slog onward, perhaps we also need to examine and consider more closely the world and experience of the “illiterate” as well. Only relatively recently has literacy been expected or even possible for the vast majority of society. For centuries, people have lived, laughed, traded, communicated, and survived without being able to read and write. Even today, though illiteracy can be a literal death sentence (studies have shown that female literacy rates can actually be a predictor of child mortality rates (Saurabh et al)), it is most certainly a metaphorical one wherein the experiences had and contributions made by those so afflicted are devalued both by design and by conceit.

We doom entire cultures and erase the experiences of entire populations by embracing the superiority of those who are literate, but illiteracy doesn’t mean ignorance. We can and should learn from everyone and we must provide other avenues to global citizenship for those who can’t read and write.

So what does this mean for our definition of literacy? At its simplest, literacy is the way that we interact with the world around us, how we shape it and are shaped by it. It is how we communicate with others via reading and writing, but also by speaking, listening, and creating. It is how we articulate our experience in the world and declare, “We Are Here!”

In my work as the director of program innovation for LitWorld, I get to interact with young people all over the world and examine the idea of literacy from many different angles. Resources for literacy education differ dramatically from one place to another, as do metric taking procedures and general best practices.

What does not change is the inherent drive for people to express themselves, to learn, and to grow. I see the enthusiasm with which young people jump at the chance to share stories of themselves and of the world, to be listened to and to absorb. I also see firsthand the devastating effect of being told that your story, your community, and your culture do not matter. I have witnessed the loss of confidence, the dwindling self-esteem, and the cycle of hopelessness that comes with the silencing of voices.

It is our charge as educators and as global citizens to embrace literacy in ALL of its forms.

5 Suggestions for Embracing Literacy for Global Citizenship in the Classroom

• Focus on students’ own stories . Find ways to center their experiences and lean in to opportunities to share them both informally and formally.
• Embrace ALL of the languages your students speak. Being multilingual is an asset, not a deficit! Many of our students are multilingual in ways we never acknowledge. Mastery of formal and standardized language structures is an important tool that every student deserves access to, but life often happens outside of and around those structures. Those everyday interactions are important, valuable, and valid as well.
• Provide regular access to diverse stories, images, experiences, and perspectives. The world is enormous and that diversity is beautiful. Help your students to see it as such. Providing access to underrepresented narratives and accounts helps to decolonize your classroom and normalize embracing the unfamiliar.
• Place value on reading, writing, speaking, listening, and creating in your students’ work. Ensure that reading and writing are not the only ways in which students are acknowledged and celebrated for taking in ideas, expressing their thoughts, or demonstrating understanding. Encouraging multiple modes of expression not only provides more opportunities for students to explore and display their own intelligence, it also primes them to seek information, inspiration, and knowledge from diverse sources.
• Read aloud together, and often . Reading aloud is effective across grade levels, despite the fact that this critical practice usually stops in elementary school. Reading aloud can provide access to content that students might not be able to access on their own. It is also a way of creating community and building a shared experience as a whole class.

The Standing Committee on Global Citizenship works to identify and address issues of broad concern to NCTE members interested in promoting global citizenship and connections across global contexts within the Council and within members’ teaching contexts.

Literacy. (2018, March 19). Retrieved March 2, 2020, from https://en.unesco.org/themes/literacy

Saurabh, S., Sarkar, S., & Pandey, D. K. (2013). Female Literacy Rate is a Better Predictor of Birth Rate and Infant Mortality Rate in India. Retrieved March 2, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4649870/

The Sustainable Development Agenda—United Nations Sustainable Development. (n.d.). Retrieved March 2, 2020, from https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/development-agenda/

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12.14: Sample Student Literary Analysis Essays

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• Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
• City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

The following examples are essays where student writers focused on close-reading a literary work.

While reading these examples, ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the essay's thesis statement, and how do you know it is the thesis statement?
• What is the main idea or topic sentence of each body paragraph, and how does it relate back to the thesis statement?
• Where and how does each essay use evidence (quotes or paraphrase from the literature)?
• What are some of the literary devices or structures the essays analyze or discuss?
• How does each author structure their conclusion, and how does their conclusion differ from their introduction?

Example 1: Poetry

Victoria Morillo

Instructor Heather Ringo

3 August 2022

How Nguyen’s Structure Solidifies the Impact of Sexual Violence in “The Study”

Stripped of innocence, your body taken from you. No matter how much you try to block out the instance in which these two things occurred, memories surface and come back to haunt you. How does a person, a young boy , cope with an event that forever changes his life? Hieu Minh Nguyen deconstructs this very way in which an act of sexual violence affects a survivor. In his poem, “The Study,” the poem's speaker recounts the year in which his molestation took place, describing how his memory filters in and out. Throughout the poem, Nguyen writes in free verse, permitting a structural liberation to become the foundation for his message to shine through. While he moves the readers with this poignant narrative, Nguyen effectively conveys the resulting internal struggles of feeling alone and unseen.

The speaker recalls his experience with such painful memory through the use of specific punctuation choices. Just by looking at the poem, we see that the first period doesn’t appear until line 14. It finally comes after the speaker reveals to his readers the possible, central purpose for writing this poem: the speaker's molestation. In the first half, the poem makes use of commas, em dashes, and colons, which lends itself to the idea of the speaker stringing along all of these details to make sense of this time in his life. If reading the poem following the conventions of punctuation, a sense of urgency is present here, as well. This is exemplified by the lack of periods to finalize a thought; and instead, Nguyen uses other punctuation marks to connect them. Serving as another connector of thoughts, the two em dashes give emphasis to the role memory plays when the speaker discusses how “no one [had] a face” during that time (Nguyen 9-11). He speaks in this urgent manner until the 14th line, and when he finally gets it off his chest, the pace of the poem changes, as does the more frequent use of the period. This stream-of-consciousness-like section when juxtaposed with the latter half of the poem, causes readers to slow down and pay attention to the details. It also splits the poem in two: a section that talks of the fogginess of memory then transitions into one that remembers it all.

In tandem with the fluctuating nature of memory, the utilization of line breaks and word choice help reflect the damage the molestation has had. Within the first couple of lines of the poem, the poem demands the readers’ attention when the line breaks from “floating” to “dead” as the speaker describes his memory of Little Billy (Nguyen 1-4). This line break averts the readers’ expectation of the direction of the narrative and immediately shifts the tone of the poem. The break also speaks to the effect his trauma has ingrained in him and how “[f]or the longest time,” his only memory of that year revolves around an image of a boy’s death. In a way, the speaker sees himself in Little Billy; or perhaps, he’s representative of the tragic death of his boyhood, how the speaker felt so “dead” after enduring such a traumatic experience, even referring to himself as a “ghost” that he tries to evict from his conscience (Nguyen 24). The feeling that a part of him has died is solidified at the very end of the poem when the speaker describes himself as a nine-year-old boy who’s been “fossilized,” forever changed by this act (Nguyen 29). By choosing words associated with permanence and death, the speaker tries to recreate the atmosphere (for which he felt trapped in) in order for readers to understand the loneliness that came as a result of his trauma. With the assistance of line breaks, more attention is drawn to the speaker's words, intensifying their importance, and demanding to be felt by the readers.

Most importantly, the speaker expresses eloquently, and so heartbreakingly, about the effect sexual violence has on a person. Perhaps what seems to be the most frustrating are the people who fail to believe survivors of these types of crimes. This is evident when he describes “how angry” the tenants were when they filled the pool with cement (Nguyen 4). They seem to represent how people in the speaker's life were dismissive of his assault and who viewed his tragedy as a nuisance of some sorts. This sentiment is bookended when he says, “They say, give us details , so I give them my body. / They say, give us proof , so I give them my body,” (Nguyen 25-26). The repetition of these two lines reinforces the feeling many feel in these scenarios, as they’re often left to deal with trying to make people believe them, or to even see them.

It’s important to recognize how the structure of this poem gives the speaker space to express the pain he’s had to carry for so long. As a characteristic of free verse, the poem doesn’t follow any structured rhyme scheme or meter; which in turn, allows him to not have any constraints in telling his story the way he wants to. The speaker has the freedom to display his experience in a way that evades predictability and engenders authenticity of a story very personal to him. As readers, we abandon anticipating the next rhyme, and instead focus our attention to the other ways, like his punctuation or word choice, in which he effectively tells his story. The speaker recognizes that some part of him no longer belongs to himself, but by writing “The Study,” he shows other survivors that they’re not alone and encourages hope that eventually, they will be freed from the shackles of sexual violence.

Works Cited

Nguyen, Hieu Minh. “The Study” Poets.Org. Academy of American Poets, Coffee House Press, 2018, https://poets.org/poem/study-0 .

Example 2: Fiction

Todd Goodwin

Professor Stan Matyshak

Advanced Expository Writing

Sept. 17, 20—

Poe’s “Usher”: A Mirror of the Fall of the House of Humanity

Right from the outset of the grim story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe enmeshes us in a dark, gloomy, hopeless world, alienating his characters and the reader from any sort of physical or psychological norm where such values as hope and happiness could possibly exist. He fatalistically tells the story of how a man (the narrator) comes from the outside world of hope, religion, and everyday society and tries to bring some kind of redeeming happiness to his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, who not only has physically and psychologically wasted away but is entrapped in a dilapidated house of ever-looming terror with an emaciated and deranged twin sister. Roderick Usher embodies the wasting away of what once was vibrant and alive, and his house of “insufferable gloom” (273), which contains his morbid sister, seems to mirror or reflect this fear of death and annihilation that he most horribly endures. A close reading of the story reveals that Poe uses mirror images, or reflections, to contribute to the fatalistic theme of “Usher”: each reflection serves to intensify an already prevalent tone of hopelessness, darkness, and fatalism.

It could be argued that the house of Roderick Usher is a “house of mirrors,” whose unpleasant and grim reflections create a dark and hopeless setting. For example, the narrator first approaches “the melancholy house of Usher on a dark and soundless day,” and finds a building which causes him a “sense of insufferable gloom,” which “pervades his spirit and causes an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an undiscerned dreariness of thought” (273). The narrator then optimistically states: “I reflected that a mere different arrangement of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression” (274). But the narrator then sees the reflection of the house in the tarn and experiences a “shudder even more thrilling than before” (274). Thus the reader begins to realize that the narrator cannot change or stop the impending doom that will befall the house of Usher, and maybe humanity. The story cleverly plays with the word reflection : the narrator sees a physical reflection that leads him to a mental reflection about Usher’s surroundings.

The narrator’s disillusionment by such grim reflection continues in the story. For example, he describes Roderick Usher’s face as distinct with signs of old strength but lost vigor: the remains of what used to be. He describes the house as a once happy and vibrant place, which, like Roderick, lost its vitality. Also, the narrator describes Usher’s hair as growing wild on his rather obtrusive head, which directly mirrors the eerie moss and straw covering the outside of the house. The narrator continually longs to see these bleak reflections as a dream, for he states: “Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building” (276). He does not want to face the reality that Usher and his home are doomed to fall, regardless of what he does.

Although there are almost countless examples of these mirror images, two others stand out as important. First, Roderick and his sister, Madeline, are twins. The narrator aptly states just as he and Roderick are entombing Madeline that there is “a striking similitude between brother and sister” (288). Indeed, they are mirror images of each other. Madeline is fading away psychologically and physically, and Roderick is not too far behind! The reflection of “doom” that these two share helps intensify and symbolize the hopelessness of the entire situation; thus, they further develop the fatalistic theme. Second, in the climactic scene where Madeline has been mistakenly entombed alive, there is a pairing of images and sounds as the narrator tries to calm Roderick by reading him a romance story. Events in the story simultaneously unfold with events of the sister escaping her tomb. In the story, the hero breaks out of the coffin. Then, in the story, the dragon’s shriek as he is slain parallels Madeline’s shriek. Finally, the story tells of the clangor of a shield, matched by the sister’s clanging along a metal passageway. As the suspense reaches its climax, Roderick shrieks his last words to his “friend,” the narrator: “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door” (296).

Roderick, who slowly falls into insanity, ironically calls the narrator the “Madman.” We are left to reflect on what Poe means by this ironic twist. Poe’s bleak and dark imagery, and his use of mirror reflections, seem only to intensify the hopelessness of “Usher.” We can plausibly conclude that, indeed, the narrator is the “Madman,” for he comes from everyday society, which is a place where hope and faith exist. Poe would probably argue that such a place is opposite to the world of Usher because a world where death is inevitable could not possibly hold such positive values. Therefore, just as Roderick mirrors his sister, the reflection in the tarn mirrors the dilapidation of the house, and the story mirrors the final actions before the death of Usher. “The Fall of the House of Usher” reflects Poe’s view that humanity is hopelessly doomed.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” 1839. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library . 1995. Web. 1 July 2012. < http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PoeFall.html >.

Example 3: Poetry

Amy Chisnell

Professor Laura Neary

Writing and Literature

April 17, 20—

Don’t Listen to the Egg!: A Close Reading of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”

“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky’?”

“Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.” (Carroll 164)

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass , Humpty Dumpty confidently translates (to a not so confident Alice) the complicated language of the poem “Jabberwocky.” The words of the poem, though nonsense, aptly tell the story of the slaying of the Jabberwock. Upon finding “Jabberwocky” on a table in the looking-glass room, Alice is confused by the strange words. She is quite certain that “ somebody killed something ,” but she does not understand much more than that. When later she encounters Humpty Dumpty, she seizes the opportunity at having the knowledgeable egg interpret—or translate—the poem. Since Humpty Dumpty professes to be able to “make a word work” for him, he is quick to agree. Thus he acts like a New Critic who interprets the poem by performing a close reading of it. Through Humpty’s interpretation of the first stanza, however, we see the poem’s deeper comment concerning the practice of interpreting poetry and literature in general—that strict analytical translation destroys the beauty of a poem. In fact, Humpty Dumpty commits the “heresy of paraphrase,” for he fails to understand that meaning cannot be separated from the form or structure of the literary work.

Of the 71 words found in “Jabberwocky,” 43 have no known meaning. They are simply nonsense. Yet through this nonsensical language, the poem manages not only to tell a story but also gives the reader a sense of setting and characterization. One feels, rather than concretely knows, that the setting is dark, wooded, and frightening. The characters, such as the Jubjub bird, the Bandersnatch, and the doomed Jabberwock, also appear in the reader’s head, even though they will not be found in the local zoo. Even though most of the words are not real, the reader is able to understand what goes on because he or she is given free license to imagine what the words denote and connote. Simply, the poem’s nonsense words are the meaning.

Therefore, when Humpty interprets “Jabberwocky” for Alice, he is not doing her any favors, for he actually misreads the poem. Although the poem in its original is constructed from nonsense words, by the time Humpty is done interpreting it, it truly does not make any sense. The first stanza of the original poem is as follows:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogroves,

An the mome raths outgrabe. (Carroll 164)

If we replace, however, the nonsense words of “Jabberwocky” with Humpty’s translated words, the effect would be something like this:

’Twas four o’clock in the afternoon, and the lithe and slimy badger-lizard-corkscrew creatures

Did go round and round and make holes in the grass-plot round the sun-dial:

All flimsy and miserable were the shabby-looking birds

with mop feathers,

And the lost green pigs bellowed-sneezed-whistled.

By translating the poem in such a way, Humpty removes the charm or essence—and the beauty, grace, and rhythm—from the poem. The poetry is sacrificed for meaning. Humpty Dumpty commits the heresy of paraphrase. As Cleanth Brooks argues, “The structure of a poem resembles that of a ballet or musical composition. It is a pattern of resolutions and balances and harmonizations” (203). When the poem is left as nonsense, the reader can easily imagine what a “slithy tove” might be, but when Humpty tells us what it is, he takes that imaginative license away from the reader. The beauty (if that is the proper word) of “Jabberwocky” is in not knowing what the words mean, and yet understanding. By translating the poem, Humpty takes that privilege from the reader. In addition, Humpty fails to recognize that meaning cannot be separated from the structure itself: the nonsense poem reflects this literally—it means “nothing” and achieves this meaning by using “nonsense” words.

Furthermore, the nonsense words Carroll chooses to use in “Jabberwocky” have a magical effect upon the reader; the shadowy sound of the words create the atmosphere, which may be described as a trance-like mood. When Alice first reads the poem, she says it seems to fill her head “with ideas.” The strange-sounding words in the original poem do give one ideas. Why is this? Even though the reader has never heard these words before, he or she is instantly aware of the murky, mysterious mood they set. In other words, diction operates not on the denotative level (the dictionary meaning) but on the connotative level (the emotion(s) they evoke). Thus “Jabberwocky” creates a shadowy mood, and the nonsense words are instrumental in creating this mood. Carroll could not have simply used any nonsense words.

For example, let us change the “dark,” “ominous” words of the first stanza to “lighter,” more “comic” words:

’Twas mearly, and the churly pells

Did bimble and ringle in the tink;

All timpy were the brimbledimps,

And the bip plips outlink.

Shifting the sounds of the words from dark to light merely takes a shift in thought. To create a specific mood using nonsense words, one must create new words from old words that convey the desired mood. In “Jabberwocky,” Carroll mixes “slimy,” a grim idea, “lithe,” a pliable image, to get a new adjective: “slithy” (a portmanteau word). In this translation, brighter words were used to get a lighter effect. “Mearly” is a combination of “morning” and “early,” and “ringle” is a blend of “ring” and "dingle.” The point is that “Jabberwocky’s” nonsense words are created specifically to convey this shadowy or mysterious mood and are integral to the “meaning.”

Consequently, Humpty’s rendering of the poem leaves the reader with a completely different feeling than does the original poem, which provided us with a sense of ethereal mystery, of a dark and foreign land with exotic creatures and fantastic settings. The mysteriousness is destroyed by Humpty’s literal paraphrase of the creatures and the setting; by doing so, he has taken the beauty away from the poem in his attempt to understand it. He has committed the heresy of paraphrase: “If we allow ourselves to be misled by it [this heresy], we distort the relation of the poem to its ‘truth’… we split the poem between its ‘form’ and its ‘content’” (Brooks 201). Humpty Dumpty’s ultimate demise might be seen to symbolize the heretical split between form and content: as a literary creation, Humpty Dumpty is an egg, a well-wrought urn of nonsense. His fall from the wall cracks him and separates the contents from the container, and not even all the King’s men can put the scrambled egg back together again!

Through the odd characters of a little girl and a foolish egg, “Jabberwocky” suggests a bit of sage advice about reading poetry, advice that the New Critics built their theories on. The importance lies not solely within strict analytical translation or interpretation, but in the overall effect of the imagery and word choice that evokes a meaning inseparable from those literary devices. As Archibald MacLeish so aptly writes: “A poem should not mean / But be.” Sometimes it takes a little nonsense to show us the sense in something.

Brooks, Cleanth. The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry . 1942. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1956. Print.

Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass. Alice in Wonderland . 2nd ed. Ed. Donald J. Gray. New York: Norton, 1992. Print.

MacLeish, Archibald. “Ars Poetica.” The Oxford Book of American Poetry . Ed. David Lehman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 385–86. Print.

Attribution

• Sample Essay 1 received permission from Victoria Morillo to publish, licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International ( CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 )
• Sample Essays 2 and 3 adapted from Cordell, Ryan and John Pennington. "2.5: Student Sample Papers" from Creating Literary Analysis. 2012. Licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported ( CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 )

Home — Essay Samples — Education — Literacy — The Importance and Role of Literacy in My Life

The Importance and Role of Literacy in My Life

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• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Literary Terms
• Definition & Examples
• When & How to Write an Essay

I. What is an Essay?

An essay is a form of writing in paragraph form that uses informal language, although it can be written formally. Essays may be written in first-person point of view (I, ours, mine), but third-person (people, he, she) is preferable in most academic essays. Essays do not require research as most academic reports and papers do; however, they should cite any literary works that are used within the paper.

When thinking of essays, we normally think of the five-paragraph essay: Paragraph 1 is the introduction, paragraphs 2-4 are the body covering three main ideas, and paragraph 5 is the conclusion. Sixth and seventh graders may start out with three paragraph essays in order to learn the concepts. However, essays may be longer than five paragraphs. Essays are easier and quicker to read than books, so are a preferred way to express ideas and concepts when bringing them to public attention.

II. Examples of Essays

Many of our most famous Americans have written essays. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson wrote essays about being good citizens and concepts to build the new United States. In the pre-Civil War days of the 1800s, people such as:

• Ralph Waldo Emerson (an author) wrote essays on self-improvement
• Susan B. Anthony wrote on women’s right to vote
• Frederick Douglass wrote on the issue of African Americans’ future in the U.S.

Through each era of American history, well-known figures in areas such as politics, literature, the arts, business, etc., voiced their opinions through short and long essays.

The ultimate persuasive essay that most students learn about and read in social studies is the “Declaration of Independence” by Thomas Jefferson in 1776. Other founding fathers edited and critiqued it, but he drafted the first version. He builds a strong argument by stating his premise (claim) then proceeds to give the evidence in a straightforward manner before coming to his logical conclusion.

III. Types of Essays

A. expository.

Essays written to explore and explain ideas are called expository essays (they expose truths). These will be more formal types of essays usually written in third person, to be more objective. There are many forms, each one having its own organizational pattern.  Cause/Effect essays explain the reason (cause) for something that happens after (effect). Definition essays define an idea or concept. Compare/ Contrast essays will look at two items and show how they are similar (compare) and different (contrast).

b. Persuasive

An argumentative paper presents an idea or concept with the intention of attempting to change a reader’s mind or actions . These may be written in second person, using “you” in order to speak to the reader. This is called a persuasive essay. There will be a premise (claim) followed by evidence to show why you should believe the claim.

c. Narrative

Narrative means story, so narrative essays will illustrate and describe an event of some kind to tell a story. Most times, they will be written in first person. The writer will use descriptive terms, and may have paragraphs that tell a beginning, middle, and end in place of the five paragraphs with introduction, body, and conclusion. However, if there is a lesson to be learned, a five-paragraph may be used to ensure the lesson is shown.

d. Descriptive

The goal of a descriptive essay is to vividly describe an event, item, place, memory, etc. This essay may be written in any point of view, depending on what’s being described. There is a lot of freedom of language in descriptive essays, which can include figurative language, as well.

IV. The Importance of Essays

Essays are an important piece of literature that can be used in a variety of situations. They’re a flexible type of writing, which makes them useful in many settings . History can be traced and understood through essays from theorists, leaders, artists of various arts, and regular citizens of countries throughout the world and time. For students, learning to write essays is also important because as they leave school and enter college and/or the work force, it is vital for them to be able to express themselves well.

V. Examples of Essays in Literature

Sir Francis Bacon was a leading philosopher who influenced the colonies in the 1600s. Many of America’s founding fathers also favored his philosophies toward government. Bacon wrote an essay titled “Of Nobility” in 1601 , in which he defines the concept of nobility in relation to people and government. The following is the introduction of his definition essay. Note the use of “we” for his point of view, which includes his readers while still sounding rather formal.

 “We will speak of nobility, first as a portion of an estate, then as a condition of particular persons. A monarchy, where there is no nobility at all, is ever a pure and absolute tyranny; as that of the Turks. For nobility attempers sovereignty, and draws the eyes of the people, somewhat aside from the line royal. But for democracies, they need it not; and they are commonly more quiet, and less subject to sedition, than where there are stirps of nobles. For men’s eyes are upon the business, and not upon the persons; or if upon the persons, it is for the business’ sake, as fittest, and not for flags and pedigree. We see the Switzers last well, notwithstanding their diversity of religion, and of cantons. For utility is their bond, and not respects. The united provinces of the Low Countries, in their government, excel; for where there is an equality, the consultations are more indifferent, and the payments and tributes, more cheerful. A great and potent nobility, addeth majesty to a monarch, but diminisheth power; and putteth life and spirit into the people, but presseth their fortune. It is well, when nobles are not too great for sovereignty nor for justice; and yet maintained in that height, as the insolency of inferiors may be broken upon them, before it come on too fast upon the majesty of kings. A numerous nobility causeth poverty, and inconvenience in a state; for it is a surcharge of expense; and besides, it being of necessity, that many of the nobility fall, in time, to be weak in fortune, it maketh a kind of disproportion, between honor and means.”

A popular modern day essayist is Barbara Kingsolver. Her book, “Small Wonders,” is full of essays describing her thoughts and experiences both at home and around the world. Her intention with her essays is to make her readers think about various social issues, mainly concerning the environment and how people treat each other. The link below is to an essay in which a child in an Iranian village she visited had disappeared. The boy was found three days later in a bear’s cave, alive and well, protected by a mother bear. She uses a narrative essay to tell her story.

VI. Examples of Essays in Pop Culture

Many rap songs are basically mini essays, expressing outrage and sorrow over social issues today, just as the 1960s had a lot of anti-war and peace songs that told stories and described social problems of that time. Any good song writer will pay attention to current events and express ideas in a creative way.

A well-known essay written in 1997 by Mary Schmich, a columnist with the Chicago Tribune, was made into a popular video on MTV by Baz Luhrmann. Schmich’s thesis is to wear sunscreen, but she adds strong advice with supporting details throughout the body of her essay, reverting to her thesis in the conclusion.

VII. Related Terms

Research paper.

Research papers follow the same basic format of an essay. They have an introductory paragraph, the body, and a conclusion. However, research papers have strict guidelines regarding a title page, header, sub-headers within the paper, citations throughout and in a bibliography page, the size and type of font, and margins. The purpose of a research paper is to explore an area by looking at previous research. Some research papers may include additional studies by the author, which would then be compared to previous research. The point of view is an objective third-person. No opinion is allowed. Any claims must be backed up with research.

VIII. Conclusion

Students dread hearing that they are going to write an essay, but essays are one of the easiest and most relaxed types of writing they will learn. Mastering the essay will make research papers much easier, since they have the same basic structure. Many historical events can be better understood through essays written by people involved in those times. The continuation of essays in today’s times will allow future historians to understand how our new world of technology and information impacted us.

List of Terms

• Alliteration
• Amplification
• Anachronism
• Anthropomorphism
• Antonomasia
• APA Citation
• Aposiopesis
• Autobiography
• Bildungsroman
• Characterization
• Circumlocution
• Cliffhanger
• Comic Relief
• Connotation
• Deus ex machina
• Deuteragonist
• Doppelganger
• Double Entendre
• Dramatic irony
• Equivocation
• Extended Metaphor
• Figures of Speech
• Flash-forward
• Foreshadowing
• Intertextuality
• Juxtaposition
• Literary Device
• Malapropism
• Onomatopoeia
• Parallelism
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Personification
• Point of View
• Polysyndeton
• Protagonist
• Red Herring
• Rhetorical Device
• Rhetorical Question
• Science Fiction
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Synesthesia
• Turning Point
• Understatement
• Urban Legend
• Verisimilitude
• Essay Guide
• Cite This Website

What is Essay? Definition, Usage, and Literary Examples

Essay definition.

An essay (ES-ey) is a nonfiction composition that explores a concept, argument, idea, or opinion from the personal perspective of the writer. Essays are usually a few pages, but they can also be book-length. Unlike other forms of nonfiction writing, like textbooks or biographies, an essay doesn’t inherently require research. Literary essayists are conveying ideas in a more informal way.

The word essay comes from the Late Latin exigere , meaning “ascertain or weigh,” which later became essayer in Old French. The late-15th-century version came to mean “test the quality of.” It’s this latter derivation that French philosopher Michel de Montaigne first used to describe a composition.

History of the Essay

Michel de Montaigne first coined the term essayer to describe Plutarch’s Oeuvres Morales , which is now widely considered to be a collection of essays. Under the new term, Montaigne wrote the first official collection of essays, Essais , in 1580. Montaigne’s goal was to pen his personal ideas in prose . In 1597, a collection of Francis Bacon’s work appeared as the first essay collection written in English. The term essayist was first used by English playwright Ben Jonson in 1609.

Types of Essays

There are many ways to categorize essays. Aldous Huxley, a leading essayist, determined that there are three major groups: personal and autobiographical, objective and factual, and abstract and universal. Within these groups, several other types can exist, including the following:

• Academic Essays : Educators frequently assign essays to encourage students to think deeply about a given subject and to assess the student’s knowledge. As such, an academic essay employs a formal language and tone, and it may include references and a bibliography. It’s objective and factual, and it typically uses a five-paragraph model of an introduction, two or more body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Several other essay types, like descriptive, argumentative, and expository, can fall under the umbrella of an academic essay.
• Analytical Essays : An analytical essay breaks down and interprets something, like an event, piece of literature, or artwork. This type of essay combines abstraction and personal viewpoints. Professional reviews of movies, TV shows, and albums are likely the most common form of analytical essays that people encounter in everyday life.
• Argumentative/Persuasive Essays : In an argumentative or persuasive essay, the essayist offers their opinion on a debatable topic and refutes opposing views. Their goal is to get the reader to agree with them. Argumentative/persuasive essays can be personal, factual, and even both at the same time. They can also be humorous or satirical; Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is a satirical essay arguing that the best way for Irish people to get out of poverty is to sell their children to rich people as a food source.
• Descriptive Essays : In a descriptive essay, the essayist describes something, someone, or an event in great detail. The essay’s subject can be something concrete, meaning it can be experienced with any or all of the five senses, or abstract, meaning it can’t be interacted with in a physical sense.
• Expository Essay : An expository essay is a factual piece of writing that explains a particular concept or issue. Investigative journalists often write expository essays in their beat, and things like manuals or how-to guides are also written in an expository style.
• Narrative/Personal : In a narrative or personal essay, the essayist tells a story, which is usually a recounting of a personal event. Narrative and personal essays may attempt to support a moral or lesson. People are often most familiar with this category as many writers and celebrities frequently publish essay collections.

Notable Essayists

• James Baldwin, “ Notes of a Native Son ”
• Joan Didion, “ Goodbye To All That ”
• George Orwell, “ Shooting an Elephant ”
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, “ Self-Reliance ”
• Virginia Woolf, " Three Guineas "

Examples of Literary Essays

1. Michel De Montaigne, “Of Presumption”

De Montaigne’s essay explores multiple topics, including his reasons for writing essays, his dissatisfaction with contemporary education, and his own victories and failings. As the father of the essay, Montaigne details characteristics of what he thinks an essay should be. His writing has a stream-of-consciousness organization that doesn’t follow a structure, and he expresses the importance of looking inward at oneself, pointing to the essay’s personal nature.

2. Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own”

Woolf’s feminist essay, written from the perspective of an unknown, fictional woman, argues that sexism keeps women from fully realizing their potential. Woolf posits that a woman needs only an income and a room of her own to express her creativity. The fictional persona Woolf uses is meant to teach the reader a greater truth: making both literal and metaphorical space for women in the world is integral to their success and wellbeing.

3. James Baldwin, “Everybody’s Protest Novel”

In this essay, Baldwin argues that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin doesn’t serve the black community the way his contemporaries thought it did. He points out that it equates “goodness” with how well-assimilated the black characters are in white culture:

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a very bad novel, having, in its self-righteous, virtuous sentimentality, much in common with Little Women. Sentimentality […] is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; […] and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty.

This essay is both analytical and argumentative. Baldwin analyzes the novel and argues against those who champion it.

Further Resources on Essays

Top Writing Tips offers an in-depth history of the essay.

The Harvard Writing Center offers tips on outlining an essay.

We at SuperSummary have an excellent essay writing resource guide .

Related Terms

• Academic Essay
• Argumentative Essay
• Expository Essay
• Narrative Essay
• Persuasive Essay

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Definition of literacy

• learnedness
• scholarship

Examples of literacy in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'literacy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

1880, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing literacy

• visual literacy

Dictionary Entries Near literacy

Cite this entry.

“Literacy.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literacy. Accessed 6 May. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of literacy, more from merriam-webster on literacy.

Nglish: Translation of literacy for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of literacy for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about literacy

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Essay on Financial Literacy for Students and Children

Importance of financial literacy, an introduction to financial literacy.

We go to schools, colleges, universities to complete our educated and start earning our livelihood. We take up jobs, practise professions or start our own businesses so that we can earn money to make our living. But which of these institutions make us capable of managing our own hard-earned money? Probably a very few of them. 

Our ability to effectively manage our money by drawing systematic budgets, paying off our debts, making buying and selling decisions and ultimately becoming financially self-sustainable is known as financial literacy. 

Financial literacy is knowing the basic financial management principles and applying them in our day-to-day life. 

Financial Literacy – What does it Involve? 

From simple practices like keeping a track of our expenses and understanding the need to spend money if we like a product to striking a balance between the value of time saved and money lost, paying our taxes and filing of tax returns, finalizing the property deals, etc – everything becomes a part of financial literacy. 

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As human beings, we are not expected to know the nitty-gritty of financial management. But managing our own money in a way that it does not affect us and our family in a negative way is important. We certainly do not want to end up having a day with no money at hand and hunger in our stomach. 

Why is Financial Literacy so Important?

Financial literacy can enable an individual to build up a budgetary guide to distinguish what he buys, what he spends, and what he owes. This subject additionally influences entrepreneurs, who incredibly add to financial development and strength of our economy. 

Financial literacy helps people in becoming independent and self-sufficient. It empowers you with basic knowledge of investment options, financial markets, capital budgeting, etc.

Understanding your money mitigates the danger of facing a fraud-like situation. A few strategies are anything but difficult to accept, particularly when they’re originating from somebody who is by all accounts learned and planned. Basic knowledge of financial literacy will help people with foreseeing the risks and argue/justify with anyone learned and well-informed.

What should you read on / get informed about in Financial Literacy?

• Budgeting and techniques of budgeting
• Direct and indirect taxation system
• Direct tax slabs
• Income and expense tracking 
• Loans and debt – EMI management 
• Interest rate systems: fixed versus floating
• Business and organisational transaction studies
• Elementary Book-keeping and Accountancy
• Cash in-flow and out-flow Statements
• Investment & personal finance management
• Asset management:
• Business negotiation skills and techniques
• Make or buy decision-making
• Financial markets 
• Capital structure – owner’s funds and borrowed funds
• Fundamentals of Risk Management
• Microeconomics and Macroeconomics fundamentals

While there are various media to learn about financial literacy, we recommend that you join a short-term, weekend programme which helps you get financially literate.

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Guest Essay

What Does African Rejection Mean for the U.S.?

By Cameron Hudson

Mr. Hudson is a senior fellow in the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The forced withdrawal , announced last month, of more than 1,000 U.S. Special Operations troops and drone operators in Niger and Chad should raise the alarm for Washington. In Africa, our policy of strengthening security partnerships rather than supporting democracy has not worked. The United States needs a new approach.

The troops had been dispatched there as a key part of America’s effort to confront terrorism, and the pullout follows the governments’ demands for new rules and regulations on U.S. military operations.

Russia, and increasingly Iran and other countries, are already stepping in to exploit a growing power vacuum in the region. That should be yet another reason for America to change course. Africa is less secure and less democratic today than when the United States sent those forces a decade ago. Given the rising influence of these other nations, that current is certain to speed up.

With Washington now forced from the front line of fighting terrorism in the region, it has the opportunity of taking a different approach: directly helping African countries deal with their economic and social problems by pushing for inclusive governance and stronger institutions. A commitment to promoting democracy, once pejoratively called nation-building, is often the first thing to go when the United States becomes ensnared in responding to local crises, as it had with terror threats in the Sahel, a semiarid area south of the Sahara.

U.S. officials would do well to remember that Africans are choosing their partners to advance their own interests, not America’s. If African governments are deciding to align themselves with Moscow over Washington, we should try to understand why rather than castigating them.

For many Sahelian leaders, choosing a strong ally is a simple matter of trying to stay in power. Moscow’s military support, offered under the guise of counterterrorism, helps. Here, Washington cannot and should not compete.

But other leaders are motivated more by a desire to diversify partnerships and to get the best deal when building infrastructure, improving education and agriculture, and extracting ores and minerals.

The roots of Washington’s worry about security concerns in the wider Sahel region emerged in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks. Weak governance and crushing poverty were seen as accelerants for a potential jihadist problem. But it was only in 2012, when extremist groups that were linked to Al Qaeda began seizing control of cities across northern Mali, that U.S. troops arrived in the region.

Since then, however, these jihadists have not displayed nearly the threat to U.S. interests that our level of military involvement would suggest. Instead, they preyed on fragile governments across the Sahel. Civilian leaders were unable to roll back the threat and failed to bring services to, or provide government control of, their countries’ increasingly populous and poor hinterlands.

The result is a region very different from the one the United States met when it first began sending security trainers and sharing sensitive intelligence in 2012. Six military governments and a host of new Russian military outposts now dot the region .

Along with the news last month of the U.S. forced departures from Niger and Chad , two countries the United Nations has said are on the front lines of the “global epicenter of terrorism,” the junta-run states of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have expelled France, the former colonial power.

To be sure, losing a military foothold in Niger and Chad makes it harder for the United States to monitor jihadists across a dozen African countries and to track human smuggling, drug trafficking and the illicit flow of arms, all of which are destabilizing the continent. U.S. military officials are already fanning out across West Africa, looking for new hosts for its drones.

But beyond the tactical losses, the withdrawal represents a genuine strategic loss for Washington.

Countries including Russia and Iran have seen an opportunity in Africa to make gains in great, and not-so-great, power competition. Every country from which France, and now the United States, have departed has welcomed Russian military advisers, mostly in the form of Moscow’s successor to the Wagner Group, Africa Corps. Russian forces can now move freely across friendly African states from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

One day soon, Moscow hopes to add warm-water ports on the Red Sea and even the Atlantic coast of Africa. These can be used to supply its growing military presence across the continent and export Africa’s prized mineral resources. Iran has similarly spied an opening to break its diplomatic isolation and turn a profit, eyeing purchase agreements with Niger’s state-linked uranium company and selling advanced weapons to Sudan’s army, helping to fuel that country’s yearlong civil war.

U.S. officials routinely frame this struggle for influence as a new Cold War. That view makes Washington no friends in African countries, where officials believe that America isn’t really interested in them beyond not wanting to lose ground to rivals. The message that Gen. Michael Langley, the head of the U.S. military’s Africa Command, delivered to Congress in March is a case in point. “A number of countries are at the tipping point of actually being captured by the Russian Federation,” he said, “as they are spreading some of their false narratives.” His message suggests a view in Washington of African nations being unwittingly duped.

Rather than escalating this competition any further, Washington should reassess the actual jihadist threat to U.S. interests and weigh the ultimate cost of security partnerships with countries lacking in democratic institutions. It should now reflect on whether the tools it has favored for so long — intelligence sharing, military training and weapons supplying — really make sense in weak and desperately poor states.

Washington has long struggled to strike a balance between protecting its position and advancing democratic values in Africa. For it to succeed, it must recognize that in this era of geopolitical choice, it can no longer dictate the terms of its partnerships with African states. If it does, it will find itself increasingly alone and unable to advance either its interests or its values on this increasingly strategic continent.

Cameron Hudson is a senior fellow in the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

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