Usefulness of Literacy concept in Language Learning and Teaching

Question

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

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

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

Answer 1

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

It involves two skills: reading and writing

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

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

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

literacy/illiteracy numeracy/innumeracy

Answer 2

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

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

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