Prompt 1 Response

     What is literacy? Literacy, most bluntly, is a person’s ability to read and write. To be a literate person one must have the skills to read and write literature. Despite this simple meaning of the word, literacy contains different levels. There are those who have low literacy levels and those who have higher literacy levels. The higher one’s literacy level, the more they will be able to understand and comprehend from a piece of work. A more literate person has the potential to discover hidden messages or themes in literature. In How to Read Literate Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster explains literature is often not as simple or straightforward as it appears. Foster stresses the importance of looking beyond the surface of the piece in order to obtain a deeper meaning of the work. Less literate people will have more difficult times attempting to delve deeper into literature and understand hidden messages, symbolism, along with other items a more literate person will notice more easily. One becomes literate by reading and writing. These two, reading and writing, forgive this cliché, “go hand in hand.” Reading literature will not only increase one’s vocabulary and structure for the language, but also assist the reader in finding more underlying messages within the text. Writing allows one to partake in their own creation of literature, thus making them more literate. Reading and writing are how people practice to become more literate. In short, literacy is the ability to read and write, more literate people understand texts more deeply, and one becomes literate by reading as well as writing.